Before and After Gazebo

Now how great a garage sale find is this for 25 cents!

I had some small scale figures in my stash, a couple of trees, and a large cake container, and this is how it ended up. The base is foam core cut to fit the container, lawn is a mix of paper mache, sawdust, glue and paint. The bushes are moss, dabbed with glue and sprinkled with flocking. The walk is paper mache, painted after it dried.

And then the cake containers for storage....a nice little project, kept me busy and out of trouble for a week!

The Dog Days of Summer

Mary Kennerly writes in the Smallstuff digest:
I found some years-old dried material in the garage and took a picture, though it doesn't include all the species used for the flowers. I bought some of this stuff (most notably a thrift-store hearth-broom - it bleaches nicely and has lovely twisty stems), but generally I found raw materials from this time of year on into fall while dogwalking in vacant lots, along roadsides, and in neglected residential alleyways. The blossom shapes are mostly the calyxes that cupped the original flowers. The most delicate material was the awns of some cereal-type plant, plus some superthin stems of quaking-grass (the "flowers" are pale pink and stuck into one of those awns.

Those red tulips (for a change I tried to make tulipish leaves) came from a hairy, sticky, quite unlovable-looking weed. A more delicate species-tulip starts from another weed, nipplewort. And a head of garlic, or its ornamental garden allium cousins, is yet another source for deeply cupped shapes.

(Teazels are the armature for a couple of the standard plants, providing both the trunk and the head into which greenery is glued, instead of using a plastic ball. Globular seed-pods from the sweet-gum tree also have holes that can be used the same way.)

Once you have the dried stuff, making blossoms is pretty quick. Add stems; paint; and there you are. So very easy. I hope somebody is inspired to do a bit of neighborhood foraging.

In the snapshot of made-up flowers, on the left there's a bunch of orange-petaled flowers with dark-rimmed yellow centers. They're made from feverfew. But feverfew calyxes are even more realistic-looking with the stem clipped short and turned upside down. I seem not to have any on hand to photograph. Worth mentioning, I think, because feverfew, with its bright green foliage and its miniature daisy flowers, is nice to have in the real-life garden. One stem is like a whole bunch of flowers to tuck in a little pitcher.

Mary's album with more information:
http://s891.photobucket.com/albums/ac111/Lutherphotos/MINIS/

Ed. Note - Look for Queen Anne's lace, put a bouquet in a jar with water and food colouring of your choice, and the blossom will pick up the colour.

T2T Lawnmower and Fertilizer Spreader

Tina Macdonald from the Canada Minis group posted this brilliant idea as part of their T2T challenge 2010.


Here is a new (I think) idea for binder clips. Most of one clip became the fertilizer spreader with the addition of two chunks of coffee stirrer to keep it open, two thumb tacks for wheels (extended with black paper disks, and a little printie with the manufacturer name. Scott really does make these things!

The remaining side of the clip became the handle for the lawnmower, with the addition of three bottle caps, four small wooden beads and two toothpicks for axles, and of course, the name of the manufacturer!

Crooked House

Sue wrote:
I've been working on the garden for my Crooked House and here are the updated photos:
http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/575400675QKiboL?start=12

The base was covered with 1" deep insulation foam so I could dig down for the pond. The first three photos show the pond that has been made with paperclay, the hard standing for the greenhouse and the stepping stones. Then I covered all the soil area with staysoft and then glued on the brown railway gravel I use for soil.

I then spent probably about four days making the crooked greenhouse. I so need to get a life LOL. As you can see from later photos, the roof lifts off. It's all very fragile and you look at it and a bit pops off, so I needed to be able to get to the inside without having to reach in the doorway, plus the roof needed a bit more support, so I attached it to the central colum. It's made from twigs glued straight onto the perpex and fixed onto a plywood base. Of the ten windows no two are the same. And I've grunged up the windows too.

The fence panels are temporarily wired on for now, I'm can be clumsy and I wanted to be able to remove them when I plant anything.

All the plants I've made from cold porcelain using Diane Harfield's cutters.

All the birds I bought from http://www.nickycc.com/ and these and the plant pots are the only things I didn't make myself.

So you can see I still have a bit of work to do ;0). The next thing will be to paint my fishes and make the bulrushes and water iris so that I can put the water in the pond.

Then I'm going to have to make a few plants, a bird table and a few other bits and bobs.

Oh, and sculpt my witch :0).

Sue from Garstang, UK
http://community.webshots.com/user/suedsimpson

Garden Lawnmower

John Scapes is a retired mechanical engineer and uses his expertise to create exquisitely detailed projects.
He created this push lawn mower for his log cabin, and is kind enough to contribute the directions.
Now if you make this mower, please show him the results!

John has a sense of humour! This gentleman doesn't exactly have the right outfit for mowing, does he? But notice how perfectly to scale the figure is!

This Tut will be posted at http://minitreasures.pbworks.com/ - look under Projects>Gardening.
There is a comments section at the end of the page. You can let him know what you did with the TUT and share a link to pictures of the result.

Colour Choices

These are a few sites where you can plan different colour combinations.

http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

Garden Shed

Sonia shows how she made this shop and the items in it.
http://minitink.blogspot.com/2009/08/mi-tienda-de-flores.html



Judy Anderson made this scene of animal chaos! She wrote: A friend found a painted Michael's hutch at a yard sale and bought it with me in mind. (Isn't it nice when your friends feed your addictions?) I've had it for a year not quite knowing what I wanted to do with it, until I saw the article "The evolution of the egg carton" in the August 2009 issue of Miniature collector Magazine. I had a dome (another yard sale find) that would be perfect and lots of egg cartons.
I still need to put a vine of some kind and I was thinking I had a butterfly some where that would go well on the skunk's nose. I keep adding things to it. It was a lot of fun to do and I thank Paddy Culhane for the article.

Garden Printies

http://artplace.homestead.com/shed1.html

Garden Gloves

http://users.psln.com/surawhit/assets/html/dollhouse_miniatures_gardengloves_tutorial.htm

Mini Bonsai

Regina Passy-Yip is a brilliant miniaturist from Brazil. Check out her blog!
http://www.reginapassy.com.br/



A wonderful TUT, although in Portuguese. The pictures are clear and easy to follow.
http://www.nippobrasil.com.br/2.semanal.artesanato/326.shtml


http://www.nippobrasil.com.br/2.semanal.artesanato/334.shtml

Wrought Iron Fence

Neat Tut posted by Jennifer in The Camp, good use of quilling paper!


http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/22331519

Try experimenting with thin slices of aluminum pan in quilling strips for the more elaborate scroll work, it might maintain the shape of the curls better.

All the flowers in the Field....

Lily of the Valley
http://www.mini-quest.com/projects.html

Being led down the Garden Path?

Well, you need stairs!
Arla Johnson has a great tut on how to make these from builder's foam on the Victoria Miniland website!
http://www.miniland.ca/GardenSteps.html

Christine Verstraete's Blog, Candid Canine has some great ideas and links toRL crafts to adapt to your wee garden.
http://candidcanine.blogspot.com/2009/07/easy-creative-ideas-to-do-in-miniature.html

These are more ideas for Pot People:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/junk/msg1008495610747.html


http://www.allfreecrafts.com/homemade-gifts/gazing-ball.shtml

More Scenery Tips!

http://www.trainweb.org/danderso/sceneryn.html


Jen Barrick outlines her techniques for creating the base for her windmill in the Greenleaf Forum:
http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/dollhouse_news/JUL2009/dollhouse-windmill.html

Trees from Floral Picks

This is a "Glitter House" site.

http://www.bigindoortrains.com/primer/glitterhouses/winter_trees_from_floral_pix/winter_trees_from_floral_pix.htm

Trees from Weeds

http://www.bigindoortrains.com/primer/weed_trees/homemade_trees.htm

Micro Magination!

These are Convention pictures posted in the South African Minis group photos.
This is the link to that album.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SouthAfricanMinis/photos/album/778691213/pic/1116833054/view?picmode=&mode=photos&order=mtime&start=1&count=50&dir=desc
They show work done by the Micro-mini club. Outstanding! Just shows how fascinating 144 is!


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MicroMinis/

Our sister groups:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MicroMinisPhoto/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MicroMinisClassroom

Tina's Log Cabin
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MicroMinis/photos/album/918436757/pic/1394519582/view?picmode=&mode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&count=20&dir=asc

Hedges and Paths

How to make a basic hedge.
http://www.villageobsession.com/basichedge.htm



Nertha Gaal discusses her Tuscan Courtyard tutorial, giving techniques for stucco, stone walls and floors.

http://minifan99.tripod.com/tuscancourtyardtutorial/id2.html

Wrought Iron FenceFence

http://home.mchsi.com/~big.phil/fencetut.html

Mata Hari Tree

Remember the Mata Hari Site?
http://littleroomers.blogspot.com/2009/06/mata-hari-and-titanic.html



Well here is a tutorial for making the tree featured in the opening scene.
http://matahari.fantaseert.nl/homepage/show/pagina.php?paginaid=168448