B is for Bougainvillea

This is the second week of my floral alphabet. You might remember the bougainvillea I started in 2010?! It was never finished. This week I made a smaller plant for the garden center.

B is for Bougainvillea!

Now I have an Agapanthus, a Bougainvillea and a Calla Lilly.  I made the calla lily a while ago. It will have to count for the "C" in my alphabet of flowers.

I'm going to have to skip a week to finish my gift for Caterina's Summer Swap. My gift is going to Kaisa in Finland. It has to be mailed by next Saturday so I'd better get busy!  :D

When I finish Kaisa's gift, I will start a letter "D" plant. Not sure what that one will be?

Hope you have a great weekend!

Little Things Learned

I learned a couple of little things while I was making my first Agapanthus. You might find them useful too?

As you can see in my last post, it was very difficult to add the flowers after I had cut and grouped the stalk together. This morning I tried a different approach.

I set up a little assembly line. A damp sponge for cleaning my tweezers. Tinted tacky glue. I used one drop of my color. I wasn't sure this would stick, but it does. This way there is no green showing on the back of each flower. The tinted glue makes cute little flower buds too. :D

While I waited for my flowers to dry, I cut my wires and smoothed out the embroidery floss I will use to wrap them.  I also started making some nursery flower pots. I'm just using plain old construction paper. Nothing fancy, they are made to be "disposable."  I recycle my real ones...

I solved another problem I had with my first plant. My paper pot was not heavy enough and the plant kept falling over. This time I added some real sand to my pots (for drainage), then a big drop of carpenter's glue. I added florist foam over that, then topped it my soil. Just that little bit of sand made a BIG difference!

You may have noticed in my first photo that my second Agapanthus flower stem is too big. I will keep working on these. I hope to have three plants ready for the Garden Center soon.

I think I will take a break from flower making today. I need to add siding to the back wall and start painting my trim. I've decided to use white. Not sure what color the doors and window frames will be yet?

Congratulations to Team USA on winning so many Olympic medals!  :D

Hope you have a great day!

A is for Agapanthus

I started my self-imposed challenge to make one plant each week from A - Z.  My first plant is A for Agapanthus.

These are some of the things I used to make my plant. To make the flower heads I separated green embroidery floss into two strands and stiffened them with white glue.  

While I waited for those to dry, I washed my hands, got another cup of coffee, and asked myself why I hadn't just bought a kit to make these?!

Carole at Wee Cute Treasures made a beautiful Agapanthus using one of Pascale Garnier's kits. Go see! :D

Inspired, I punched and shaped more flowers from my hand painted paper. There will about twenty tiny flowers on each stalk.

Then I gathered 10 pieces of one inch long embroidery floss. I tied them together in the center with wire. I guessed at the size of the flower head. I looked at Carol's flowers and the planter box she made for them. I made mine about 1.5 cm. The smaller the measurement, the more I like the metric system. :D

Next there was "some assembly required." Don't ask how long this took me. I'll tell you.When I got to this point I had spent about five hours on this one plant.

I made my leaves with photo copy paper painted on both sides. I usually use masking tape. The copy paper worked great for this plant. By the way, I discovered that "cloth covered wire" is not really covered with cloth. It is wrapped with embroidery floss. I made my own because I didn't have any and didn't feel like going shopping...

So here is my little Agapanthus. Hope you like it.  :D

You can be sure that next week's plant will be a whole lot easier to make! It will start with the letter B.

Hope you have a great day! May you have many, many flowers in your garden!