Making Miniature Flowers

This past week I put away the needlework projects in order to spend a bit of time making some miniature flowers. I have always enjoyed landscaping and making vases or pots of mini flowers as along with pictures, I think that flowers belong in every mini setting and they can be so much fun to make.

I will start with a few comments about the picture of the supplies that I have used to create some plants and flowers. The large piece of wood contains a jig that was made for me by my husband, Tom. It is basically just two lines of drilled holes with cut pieces of toothpicks in each hole. The idea is to wrap covered floral wire around the toothpicks and pulling the piece out at the end. There is a piece of the covered wire sitting on the wood board. Hopefully, it is visible. The jig has been very helpful to me because it can be used to do the stems of hanging plants. Once the covered wire is removed from the jig, the wire can be cut into various lengths to form the plant.

There is one flower punch shown in the picture of supplies. It happens to be one of the more expensive punches, but there are some inexpensive ones available at Michaels and other craft supply stores. The better punches are available at various sources....Hanky Panky Crafts is one source and others are available. Also some of the artisan plant and flower makers sell supplies.

There are two types of glue in the supply picture, a piece of art foam (used for bending the punched out shapes with a ball stylus). As for the paper, you can use various card envelopes or colored sheets of stationery or you can use the paper that is sold by many of the artisan flower makers...the Japanese silk paper. The Japanese paper is wonderful to use and is easy to paint with acrylic paint in any color that is needed.

One thing that is very hard to see in the supply picture is the foil with the Fimo balls. I use fimo shaped into balls and with a covered wire inserted in the end as the basis for many of the flowers. Plastic or wooden beads can be used as the base for the flowers, but fimo works well, the only drawback being that it does need to be baked in a toaster-oven before the flower parts are attached. One flower that I made this week is the hydrangea and I will add a picture of that, hopefully at the end of this note. One note of caution... there are two types of glue shown in my supply picture and they are both necessary and to be used carefully. I have to say that I am the world's worst at proper glue application so do be careful... A little goes a long way. The tacky glue is used first and is followed by a touch of the Zap A Gap. One might say that the Zap A Gap is the magic ingredient in any flower making because that is what makes the flowers or leaves stay on the plant.

One note to all reading this...if you click on the supply picture, everything is much easier to see. You can actually read the names on the glue bottles and see the covered wire after it has been removed from the jig. I have had fun making these flowers and plants this week and I hope that many of you will join in the fun, too. I love hydrangeas, probably because they are not grown in south Florida. However, I am planning to use many of them on the front of my Thornhill so I need to get busy. Those flowers take a lot of time, but they are worth it.