The Strelitzia...and finally filling the shelves...

Challenging and fun are the two words that spring to mind regarding my plantathon for the tiny greenhouse.
The Strelizia - the fabulous Bird of Paradise plant has been to say the least, challenging!!

 Herewith the Bird of Paradise, which is in its third incarnation and been repainted twice, cut down and dragged out of its very lovely but too small pot and another crafted out of card to accommodate it! The huge and very upright plant has rather glaucous leaves and I promise the actual miniature has rather better colour than the photograph suggests.....weirdly, apart from the central vein the others are prominant  on the front of the leaves not the back as with most plants.
I was backwards and forward studying the real one until I nearly drove myself mad!
Together with the cheese plant, it and a few others will stand in the main body of the greenhouse if I can fit them in - soon.

I spent many, many happy days crafting the variety of smaller plants for the three shelves on the back wall and I'm quite pleased with the crowded result and not worried that they're not perfect.  There are a few which probably don't feature in any plant catalogue - call it artist's licence!

In the end there are only a couple that I haven't made from scratch: the lovely pink cyclamen is a kit from The Miniature Garden Centre and the super pink geranium is by The Flower Lady. The tumbling ivies took my entire stock of natural 'leaf' scatter which was all dyed then varnished when in position, and where I did use a paper punch I only had a choice of two, so a lot of pieces were hand cut or 'created' from bits of natural material. Some of the leaves are scanned and scaled down from real ones and the Iron Cross Begonia was a useful printie find that I played about with.

Pots are cheapies, my own recipe air dry clay and odds and sods:there's an antique brass perfume bottle lid, a small brass cartridge as well as a toggle from a someone's sweat shirt and an old bead.

Yes, I admit I do still work in a muddle!

I've really appreciated the encouraging comments so hope you'll enjoy installment.  Next step is to get the plants in position on the floor in front of the wall......hmmm!

Thanks for looking
Robin

Working on New Plants for the Greenhouse

It's been a real struggle this week to concentrate on basic housekeeping jobs - who wants to iron and hoover when there are miniature plants just crying out to be created?? In an effort to find exactly the right piece of saved dried plant material, I was forced to empty and thus reorganise a BIG cupboard.....so I did actually move out, move on and dump some bits and pieces and felt quite smug.

The rather weird seed heads pictured came from a flowering plant I grew a few years  in the garden - the trouble is I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Does anyone out there recognise it? It wouldn't have been anything rare or exotic.
I've kept three or four because they fascinated me and finally found a use for one as a rather interesting mossy support for the Cheese Plant I've just made for the greenhouse.  I need a couple of large plants in the place to balance the heavily planted shelves on the back wall.

I had to rely on memory and Internet images for the cheese plant, but fortunately I have a Clivia, just flowering, so I could study that before embarking on what I hope is a passable miniature. The tiny buds are dried plant material but the flowers and leaves - as in most of my plants- are paper.

I've been working on enough different plants to fill three shelves on the back wall and apart from some titivating I'm almost there. 'Titivating'!! I love that word - reminds me of my elderly aunts titivating their summer hats with new ribbons.
My second large plant, a Strelitzia, is proving to be VERY challenging, despite the fact that I have one three feet away from me I study every day!

More next time, hopefully.
Thanks for looking
Robin

Autumn Inspires a New Miniature Houseplant

It has certainly been chilly the last couple of weeks and damp and misty, but autumn has given us some spectacular sunsets, bright frosty mornings and wonderful autumn colour in our gardens and countryside. I've been working on my little greenhouse, and it's also given me  fabulous miniature plants.

Although we live in a fairly built-up area we are still able to appreciate some lovely sunsets, and some bright frosty mornings when the sky sparkles with tracer trails from aeroplanes.

While I know we can't compete with the glory of the N.American fall, our trees, hedgerows and garden shrubs give us enormous pleasure at this time of year.

Just outside our back door we have a Cotinus bush that gives us pleasure all year long, from the early purple foliage, through smokey flowers, to chocolate-coloured leaves and amazing auumn colour as the leaves change and fall.
I spent days looking at the gorgeous changes as the leaves coloured, then had a light-bulb moment!!!

As you know I'm quietly plant-making for my mini greenhouse, and I am so enjoying myself - proper playtime!!
It dawned on me that the Cotinus leaves resembled any number of exotic house plants....I was out there collecting leaves!!!  Scanned, reduced in scale, I had miniature exotic houseplants!

I've used real leaves in this way many times before and have always been pleased with the result...if you haven't tried, have a go.

Thanks for looking
Robin