| The "large project" for 2004 for
the Miniaturia Guild of Cape Town was a Garden
scene. The basic 3 walls and floor "roombox" was supplied
and the Guild ran workshops throughout the year on various flowers but one's own imagination could run
riot.
I was still struggling with working in a small scale and I couldn't seem to handle the tiny pieces but trial and error triumphed and the garden was eventually completed. |
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Walls This one of the first attempts I made at stonework and it worked well until all the little pieces started "pinging" off as the MDF underneath dried out - there was certainly a lesson to be learned there! The problem was solved by repainting the stonework with acrylic paint with a teaspoon of latex added to it. This "glued" them all together and they've held in place ever since! It also added a rather nice translucence to the surface - serendipity! |
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As a time saver I sealed the surface of the MDF with white glue and once it
was dry I added the stone surface. Using a home-made stencil cut
from a sheet of acetate, "polyfilla" was ROUGHLY trowelled over it, then the
acetate was peeled off carefully. The filler was left to firm up before trimming and cleaning it up. I could only do smallish sections at a time, staggering the layout so that it didn't appear to be a repeat and filling in by hand later any sections that had been missed. A gentle sanding once it was completely dry gave the stones a more weathered look. The whole surface was then painted using acrylics (see Crazy Paving for the paint mix). Looking at it now, I'd like to try adding a little more "light and shade". |
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Flowers The roses (which were purchased) had extraordinary leaves which "didn't belong" - I stripped these off and added them to the dark purple spikes in the foreground where they were more in keeping with the plant! I made up new leaves for the roses from punched leaves but I'm still not happy with the size and also, as I have learnt since, a ball tool makes a lot of difference to the finish of any leaf! The hollyhocks in the far hand corner are layers of pink tissue pulled into a ball and tied off, then an X-cut across the top allows the petals to be folded out. The partially opened ones at the top were tiny balls off a sheet of styrofoam, dipped in green with a touch of pink acrylic for the petals. The pink
shrub on the left is dried Fairy Statice with a touched with pink acrylic paint The apple tree was a real labour of love - every leaf was individually
made The scenic water looked very nice when new but, in this climate, it has dried slightly and also collected dust (Cape Town is particularly windy!) |
