Welcome to my life . . . .

This is a blog about my passion: dollhouses and miniatures. This particular blog was started to follow my miniature dream: to create a Victorian Mansion. But work on my Mansion is slow. Very slow. Sloth slow. Ice Age glacier movement slow. Why? Because I am easily distracted by other personal miniature projects (I have 50+ roomboxes and 15 dollhouses in various stages of incompletion) and because I work for a miniature shop and am often up to my elbows in miniature projects that aren't mine! So, I thought, some artists work in a particular medium (woods, watercolors, clay, oils, etc.), I work in progress . . . .

Sunday, April 21, 2024

Hanging on the Vine

The large "to do" item still remaining on my Birithmas Peruvian scene is to make the flowers that will be on the tree and lattice work on the restaurant side. My friend's patio scene got wisteria, but I wanted something red.

Friend's blue wisteria hanging on the patio side

So I researched red Peruvian flowers (because the street side of my roombox is based on Arequipa in Peru) and found the Cantuta flower:

Flowers seem more pink than red but close enough!

So I painted my oriental rice paper in shades of red and pink. Thought I was being clever and made swirls and variations of the colors on the paper. However, once these tiny things are cut, rolled, punched, and glued, you can hardly tell each one had streaky hues of reds. Since real flowers are about 6" long, my flowers had to be 1/2" long max. Took a few hours but I rolled some cones and punched out flowers...and then glued them together to get my tubular flowers:

Step by step to get each flower
My tubular army

I started out trying to make the flowers about 1/2" long but my fingers were feeling arthritic so I began to make the tube parts longer and cut them down after the glue was dried just so I would have something to hold on to while trying to glue the flowers onto the cones.

While those were drying, I also replaced a very plastic fake looking plant in my crocheted plant holder. The plant holder came with this plastic plant but I wanted something more authentic. I liked the pot so I ripped out the green plastic and replaced with an agave leave plant kit I had purchased from Dioramapresepe on Etsy
Plastic plant needed to go

My agave leaves in place

Then I glued my tubes to my vines in my patio restaurant.




My little plant back in its holder and on the wall.

I still want to attempt a String of Pearls or a String of Turtles plant to go in a planter on the wall, but that's another day's project. For now, this patio restaurant is open for business!