Probably my last plants

I was looking through my stash of things to see if I had a pot for my proposed Swiss cheese plant and discovered a white rose kit which was a lovely surprise.  This led to continuing the stock check to see if I had enough vases or pots or whatever for my proposed three plants; inexorably this led to me treating myself to these.

I wanted to share this purchase in case you are looking for perfect scale, hand blown, paper-thin glass at a price you can afford.  The vendor is just the very best.  Glasscraft
Nothing here costs more than £7 ($8.80) and the cute tadpole in a jam jar at the front was all of £3.50 ($4.40)

The bon-bon dish is 'silver' with two gilded cranberry glass dishes

The perfume bottle has a removable long-stemmed perfume stopper and is incredibly dainty

apologies I put the stopper back in wonky.

With enough vases now but still no answer to the Swiss cheese plant container I decided to press on.

Ladies Mile Miniatures

as usual I added veins

wires glued to the back

I made a cardboard pot; later it was painted silver grey.  In these pictures it is at its inception with the surplus cardboard on its bottom waiting to be cut off, trim added and then painted.

When the leaves were all cut to different lengths but not yet finished, they were shoved into their proposed embryonic container and placed in the room to see if they were going to work.

chair at the front with plant at the back??

the reverse version??

The grey pot was soon discarded as it was too clunky and I found this over-size vase/pot in my things and used this.  The leaves were bent into shape and glazed with Americana triple thick brush on gloss and glaze - any pva glue will do the job.

The first decision for the final room was this

After eating a pizza and wondering what to do with the lovely little 'table' in the box the next iteration became this.

now centre front and small rocking chair added into the left hand corner

 It sits very well on its pizza box spacer, smack bang in the dormer window grabbing all the light it can.

So, on to the roses.  I have shown you a picture of the real plant first, so you can see how careful Theresa Stringer is in making her plants realistic.

Rosa x alba 'Alba Semiplena'

White rose of York

the real one

great kit as always Ladies Mile Miniatures

top

side

back

ten and and one extra

Looks best in front of the mirror .......

............. but I wanted them on this side of the hall where there was going to be a painting but I think they will be too 'busy in front of that.  I have a fetish for symmetry.

This little tweak will cost me a good amount of money as I now have to buy another Jim Coates Trumeau mirror for the other side of the hall for perfect symmetry.  The postage will cost me as much as the mirror.

My second flower was a rose.

Pink Standard Rose 'Maiden's Blush

the real one

Ladies Mile Miniatures

in process

top

side

 I loved making the buds.  The pieces for these buds/centre of the rose are cut on a sort of angle - like a child's windmill so they 'want' to overlap each other.  If you just gently roll them between your fingers they fold over each other beautifully.

A word about stamens - all flower makes start with adding a small blob of glue to one end of the paper covered wire to stop the petals being pushed off.  You need to decide if this is going to be visible or not and, if visible, what colour it needs to be painted.  In something like these roses they were not intended to be seen so they can be left like this.  The glue dries almost clear and takes on the colour of the green paper underneath so they are very subtle.

ta - dah

This story has a bit of a sad ending.  I bought these for the music room without really thinking about it and now realise they just don't look nice in there.  It proved difficult to find a place for some flowers in that room and, if I did, they really need to be yellow as the room is grey and gold, this pink just jars.  Hey ho, one for the sell-it box.