Growing A Cottage Garden Part 2

Serendipity smiled on me this week and as a result, I ended up with some bonus mini time! I put it to good use and continued making flower kits. I stuck with the SDK kits since I was kind of on a roll with them.

First up was the Dandelion kit. I had two of them.

Each kit contains enough to make three clusters of three Dandelions. Because of my particular garden needs, I made one kit (almost) as directed, but opted to make some single Dandelions from the second kit. My gravel grout border on the paths is narrow, and fitting in a cluster of three might prove difficult. But three clusters in the cracks of each of the three outside fence planters should be perfect.

Once the flowers were made, I twisted them into groups of three, decided on the height I wanted them sticking out of the ground, then ran a bead of hot glue at that point.

Then, I cut off the excess wire, squirted a tiny puddle of hot glue onto my self healing mat, and pushed the Dandelion cluster into it - essentially creating a base for easier planting.

And I have six singles to be placed in the narrow path gravel or other cracks as needed.

Next I made the Ageratum kit. I made up some smaller buds based on photos I'd seen Googling. They are not the most beautiful flower, but I made two groupings and I think they'll make nice pots or fillers.

I really love Geraniums - probably because they were always the hardest flowers (in my attempts at real life gardening) to kill. Long after my over exuberant spring fever buying and planting frenzy had lost it's luster, and I'd forgotten to water too often, they were the last flowers standing. So, because they are such a forgiving flower, I thought the cottage should have loads of them. Exactly fifty-one of them, to be exact. But I only had one kit!

The kit makes three large and two small clusters using beads for the flower heads, then fifteen separate leaf stems. Very fun kit to make.

So taking my new found skills from the kit, I made forty-six more - twenty-four with 1/8" beads, and twenty-two with 3/16" beads. I knew I'd finally use these beads someday! I didn't want jewel colors to peek through, so each bead got a dip in salmon paint.

For the flowers, I used Rice Paper that I got from Pierce Miniatures a long while back. It has an almost translucent look, but is very strong because of it's fibrous nature. I colored it with a Cocktail Pink ProMarker, then used a blending pen to create a streaky, more natural and varied appearance.

I used my Punch Bunch five flower corner punch to make the petals. It comes with a removable corner guard that just pops off the bottom in case you don't want it for corners.

One issue I experienced was that the fibers from the rice paper wanted to catch and snag in the punch. You can see the badly cut flowers in the photo below. I remembered that the eBay seller had sent a handy How To sheet with the punches. It said to sharpen the punch, just use it on regular printer paper. So I experimented, and discovered that if I punched the rice paper and the printer paper at the same time, it cut almost perfectly every time. I also found that having the punch cut the rice paper first (so stacking the rice paper then the printer paper), I got a slightly better result. There was a lot of weeding the printer punches from the rice paper punches, but it was for a good cause!

Hopefully, fifty-one geraniums will be enough to make a good dent in seven small and one gigantic window box, plus a couple window sill pots! :o)

But there were still twenty-eight leaf stems to make! For those, I used the Silk Linen Paper, also from Pierce Miniatures. It is thicker and more textured than the rice paper, and perfect, it seems, for Geranium leaves! I used Botanical alcohol ink to color the paper, and my Punch Bunch Geranium leaf punch to cut out five leaves per stem.

Kris Compass over at One Inch Minis has a great Geranium tutorial, so if you can get the punches, go make some Geraniums!

And believe it or not, after all those Geraniums, I was still excited to start on the Daylily kit! The kit makes eight, but I purchased an extra set of leaves and petals.

The wonderful thing about Lilies is that you can make them in a gazillion different colors and have fun experimenting, which is exactly what I did!

I loved the one in the lower left, so I gave it a good try with the supplies at my disposal: ProMarkers and a blending pen.

First, I saturated the center of the Lily petal with the blending pen, then added a tiny dot of green, then blended with the blending pen to give it a soft and faded out look.

For the pink, again I saturated only the tips of each petal, added a dot of pink, then blended into the center of the petal.

They came out looking so lively, and I think all sixteen of them will make a nice impact in the garden! They were so much fun to do, I may just have to make an entire Lily garden one day and experiment with every variety!

I think the next segment of "gardening" will be the herbs and leafy plants. I have a whole Camellia tree to make, but that is going to be a project in itself! I'm watching tree making videos, reading posts from awesome and experienced bloggers, which hopefully, will give me the confidence to just jump in. Until then, leafy greens!

Hope you're enjoying the change of seasons, and all the special things that brings!

xo xo,
Jodi

Growing A Cottage Garden Part 3

With all those Geraniums ready to go, I only needed to make a couple other flowers to have what I needed to fill the flower boxes. I didn't want them to compete color wise with the house structure, but instead be a cohesive complement to it. So with all those pinky-peach Geraniums, I decided some nice off white Dahlias would be lovely. For these, I had Bonnie Lavish kits. I needed twenty of them, and luckily, had four kits - each kit makes six. The challenge was that petal sheets from two kits were a perfect off white, and two were white white. I was able to color the petals in my palest yellow ProMarker, Buttercup, then use the blending pen to wash out most of the color. I also brushed some alcohol ink onto the leaf sheets to give them more depth in color. They came out great!

To plant the boxes, I followed the recommendation for planting in pots from the SDK Kits. I also dipped each wire into glue before pushing into the air dry clay. The soil I used is Woodland Scenics Fine Turf Soil.

And here are the flower boxes all planted. I needed to keep the long box pretty low profile, since it will be placed across the back opening, separating the upper and lower floors. To the small flower boxes, I also added pale pink Daisies from Bonnie Lavish kits. I'll get some photos of them installed onto the cottage soon, but don't want to install them yet until I know I am ready to attach the house permanently on the landscape base.

With the flower boxes filled, it was easier to know how much more I'd need to make to fill the planters and pots for the rest of the garden. So next, I decided to tackle the tea blend planter. I don't necessarily have kits for all of the herbs and flowers that make good tea blends, so for these I'm going to have to attempt my own. One of the easiest looking flowers was Chamomile.

I thought I could create a reasonable facsimile using flower punches, yellow Floral Foam, Lycopodium, and floral wire.

I dipped the end of each wire into Fast Grab Tacky Glue to create a nice ball on the end, then let dry.

Once dry, I dipped in regular Elmer's School glue, then into the floral foam. I used my fingers to gently shape and press the foam into the glue, then let dry.

Meanwhile, I punched petals from plain white printer paper, and calyxes from some left over green colored silk paper.

Once the floral foam centers were dry, I assembled. Push one white petal up, almost touching the floral foam. Add a tiny dot of glue, then seat the petal  against the floral foam. Do the same with the next petal, offsetting the petal from the first. Then add the green calyx. I also made a few stems without white petals to simulate flowers in earlier stages of growth. To these, I added and extra calyx petal.

For the leaves, I made a bundle of the flower stems, wrapped lycopodium around them and secured with a wire. I cut off the excess wire, squirted hot glue into a water bottle cap, inserted the bottom of the bundle and held there until the glue was cool and the flowers secured. Then I cut away the bottle cap.

Then I just fluffed, shaped and arranged.

It came out pretty well, and I'm glad I gave it a try! I hope I have as much luck with the rest of the tea blend plants that I need to make for the planter. Luckily, I have kits for the Mints, and some leaf sheets I can use for the Lemon Balm!

Back soon, I hope, with more tea and bee garden goodness!

xo xo,
Jodi

Summer In New Orleans

As I begin to put this post together, I am realizing that it may end up a little long. There were a lot of little things to do, none of them post worthy on their own, but now that they're done, they've really added up! I skipped around on the tasks, too, so I'll try to make sense of the potentially disjointed photos. Hopefully, you won't get too board or overwhelmed before the end!

This was the electrical tangle coming from under the house that needed to be camouflaged into something that looked like it belonged there. In addition, the second floor wires had to somehow join up with them. A shed and drainpipe seemed the best way to organize the mess and make a convenient electrical hub.

I used 1/8" basswood to construct a basic shed.

I had some really old and stiff hinges for the top of the shed. The outlet strip fits just inside. I mad an access hole in the floor to feed the first floor wires into.

The second floor wires are fed down from the roof and hidden in "copper downspout". You can see in the second photo below that I also added braces to the pipe and the roof crown molding is installed. The front doors are completely removable for wide access, and slide into a groove on the lid.

I began working on the finishing details for the front of the house, too. I needed to make a couple flower boxes for the dormers. I added some molding and trims to basic boxes to jazz them up a little, then decided to paint them copper to match the dormer roofs and balcony railing. I was torn for a bit about the flower colors. It was between yellow or red, but I am glad I went with the red and white combo.  It just pops against the teal.

I tend to get carried away with landscaping (remember the Storybook Cottage?) so I have tried extremely hard to keep it minimal on this build. The footprint on this house is already imposing, so when I do add the landscape board, I'll be keeping it restricted to some shrubs and lots of mulch.

For the flat roof, I went with a roll of skateboard grip tape. Here's the Amazon Link so you can get a better look at what it is, but it's too pricey on Amazon. You can go into your local skate shop and pick up a 12" x 46" roll for under $4.00. It has an adhesive backing on it, which makes it easy to install. It also peels up easily if you later need to track down wiring issues. It's a nice thickness and also makes great asphalt road if you're making a neighborhood diorama. Just add lane stripes!

The window boxes are filled with red Dahlias and white Geraniums. I made red Begonias, white Azaleas, red and white Fuchsias and red/green Echeveria, too. That was me being conservative. Now you see why I am not allowed to garden any longer in real life. At least it's harder to kill the miniature varieties! I didn't end up using the yellow Pansies, but now I've got them ready for some future endeavor!

I kept staring at the front of the house, trying to figure out what was missing. I decided that the lower porch railing needed to be copper, too, otherwise it just felt as if it disappeared.

Before in teal instead of copper.

After painted copper.

Keeping the balcony simple, each side of the door got a topiary in a fleur-de-lis copper pot and a pot of red and white flowers.

I;m still debating about a flower box for the lower floor bay window. I may just do shrubs but will decide once I get the house on the landscape board.

The landscape board won't stick out farther than the front steps.

The Fuchsia basket took two Bonnie Lavish kits of twelve each plus an additional 12 bud stems that I made using painted glue bulbs and extra leaves. I had planned on two additional hanging baskets for the porch, but ran out of Fuchsia kits!

I think it looks just interesting enough, though I could fill it completely if I didn't reign myself in! This is my compromise and what I'll call Summer In New Orleans.

The landscape board and the back opening trim are all that is left before I can finally get inside to furnish and decorate. I haven't officially finished a dollhouse since the Sweet Christmas Cottage in November of 2017, but with a little luck and perseverance I may just finish the New Orleans and the Storybook Cottage this year!!!