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!

A Little Bit Accomplished

I'm making some progress with my bougainvillea. Thanks to everyone for your helpful comments, links, emails and tutorials! You are such great mini friends!

What you see here is another idea I had yesterday. I'm using embroidery floss stiffened with glue. I strung my flowers on the floss like I did when I made the lei for Cheryl.

The string in the middle has two or three flowers close together. When the glue is dry I'll shape and position them. I can also cut these long strings apart and use the flowers individually. This is a whole lot easier than trying to make them one at a time!

The branch on the right is just painted florist wire and stiffened brown embroidery floss. I'm still working on my leaves! Thanks Tabitha for your terrific tips and photos! May used the cutest little flower pasta for her bougainvillea. Check out her tutorial!

I found this photo online. This is a real bougainvillea that survived a hard freeze in Florida.

I love how it shows the shape of the plant. I like having a picture to refer to when I'm making something.

I really didn't get much done yesterday but I do have an excuse! A doctor's excuse at that. I had to go to the opthalmologist on Friday. Seems I have a blocked oil gland on my lower eyelid. Not pretty and quite painful too.

I'm having to apply warm compresses to my eye every few hours and drops three times a day. Thankfully, the pain and swelling are gone and my vision is okay. I'm just not allowed to wear my contacts and I don't own a pair of glasses! Maybe I'll have to work on something larger for a while or go take another nap? LOL

Thanks again for all of your encouragement and help! Hope you enjoy this beautiful day!

Painting Paper

Here's the little planter box I made for my bougainvillea plant. To me it looks HUGE when I realize that I need to make enough flowers to fill it!


I painted my paper on one side. I'll flip it over and paint the other side when it's dry.

I used thinned acrylic paint here but I might try watercolors on another piece of paper? I'm loving these colors.

There will be a lot of punching going on here today. Not to mention the branches that need to be put together and the leaves and ...

This is going to take ALL day and maybe tomorrow too!

Hope you have a pretty day!

Bougainvillea?

This took me over an hour and I'm not there yet. I don't have a three leaf punch so I hand cut each petal and glued them on one by one.

I used painted coffee filters but I think my handy dandy table paper will look better. It's thinner and perhaps I can get a better effect with that? Bougainvillea petals are very transparent. That's what makes them so beautiful.

I'm going to try painting one side of the paper pink and the other side red or orange and see how that looks. As you can see I have a LONG way to go! I'm going to try again tomorrow.

Hope you have a good night!