I was thinking about plants and my miniatures.....

I expect if you've been reading my blogs for a while you'll have worked out that gardening, and creative arts and crafts, but predominately miniatures, have been passions since I was young. Although it's mostly gardening at the moment.
 

Growing up with a mother who somehow passed on a love of plants both wild and cultivated - and their latin and common names - without her daughters ever actually realising it, to creating my own gardens, we all became 'gardeners'.  Our family was like that - and painting, drawing, making things...whether it was a pair of gloves or a dollshouse...it must be in the genes.  

So many of you seem to be both passionate miniaturists and gardeners. From reading your blogs I'm convinced that there is a direct link between visualising a garden - even when it's a bare patch of earth - and visualising a dolls house and its 'people'and accessories, even when it's just a box or a kit!
So - stick with it..... the following picture (I expect you've seen one like it every year...sorry) is our glorious Continus in its autumn foliage.  The leaves are almost like animal skins, or exotic plants, so vivid.  So a few years ago I scanned, reduced and used miniature paper copies as exotic leaves in my miniature conservatory. It's how you see it - isn't it? 

Back in the day (and historically) fresh foliage was preserved in a mixture of glycerine and water, fresh flowers in  dry preservatives like silver sand or borax or even washing powder!! Oh yes I tried them all!  Thinking small I preserved tiny flowers like forget-me-nots and lychnis, tiny grasses, seed heads and ferns which I used in little arrangements before the brilliant floral experts pushed the art to a whole new level.  Illona and Jan Southerton.... are two of my favourites who spring to mind using completely different materials and techniques.  Of course now there are lots of lovely commercial products like coloured foam, scatter, fibres, papers,  polymer clays and silks that make life  easier for all of us, but it is so satisfactory to start from scratch and develop your own techniques and find your own way, I think.

Finally I can't resist showing you a picture of one of the little robins that accompany us when we're digging and weeding - having filled up on worms, he/she is having a bath in one of our mini ponds.

Anecdotally, gardens and outside spaces help many of us cope with the restrictions of the pandemic; I'm sure hobbies and crafts have played a major part too in keeping us 'sane'. Your many and various blogs have been fun, inspiring, and informative - thank you all for staying in touch. Stay safe.


Thank you for looking.
Robin x