More cat-o-nine tails and more flowers

I finished the cat-o-nine tails today, and they look pretty good in the onsen.

To make them, cut some 32 gauge wrapped florists wire to the length you want it.

2. Put a bit of Aleene's Clear Gel Tacky Glue on one end of the wire, and dip it into some model railroad sand.

3. Use your fingers to mold it to a cat tail shape.

4. Cut slivers of green scrapbbook paper to the length and width you want them and glue them to the bottoms of the stems, leaving a bit of stem below the leaves for inserting into your base.

I may add a few more leaves to mine to make them fuller.

Here they are in the onsen. I will position them a little better when they are completely dry. I may add a few more leaves if they look like they need it.

This is an overview of what the ryokan looked like after I made the cat tails and added some flat stones to the steps up to the ryokan. I forgot to take a closeup of the rock steps. They were stones I found on the beach behind the shop. I still haven't decided how I am going to finish the wall behind the steps yet.

Just before we closed up, I was playing around with foliage branches, just to get ideas for filling things in behind the onsen, and on the side of the flagstone path. I need to buy more stones before I can finish the rock retaining walls. I tried some rocks from the beach, but we have mostly granite on the island, and the stones on the beach don't really work well for the walls.

I also made some daisies, and added them to the left of the bridge.

This is another view of playing around with foliage branches. Even thought the rock wall isn't finished, at least I can get an idea of whether or not I want to use them here.