Making waterlilies

I didn't get much time to work on the ryokan today, but I did try some waterlilies.

I was trying to figure out a way to be able to make them fairly quickly, and decided to use these two punches to make the leaves and flowers. I used the apple punch for the leaves, then just trimmed them a bit until they looked more like lilypads and less like apples. Then I used the flower punch and cut two sets of flowers for each waterlily. The top part of the flower was curved up and glued onto the bottom flower offsetting the petals. Then I curved the bottom petals up a bit, and put a dot of yellow paint in the center.

I only got a chance to make a few. I glued down the lily pads I had so far using the liquid nails clear sealant I used for the waterfall. I haven't glued the flowers down yet, they are just sitting there waiting until I make more leaves and/or flowers. I'm not sure how many I will want to add.

I also put a few pieces of mossy/grassy stuff over some of the water on the side. I'm not sure yet, how much of that I will add.

Made some irises for the onsen

I figured out a pretty easy way to make miniature irises today. I had been wanting to make some for a while, but didn't really know what to use to make them. Today, as I was going through my punches, I came across the one in the photo below. It has eight petals, and I really only needed six, but I thought I would try it anyway.

To make the iris:

1: Punch out a flower in your desired color of scrapbook paper.

2: Thread a piece of florists wire through the center.

3: If your flower has six petals, fold three petals up, and three down, alternating each petal. If your flower has eight petals, as mine does, fold the petals with the red "u's" up, the ones with the yellow "d's" down, and cut off the two petals with the green "c's" close to the center using a pair of manicure scissors. If your irises are as tiny as mine are, you won't even notice where you cut the petals out.

4: Dip a piece of the florists wire into some yellow craft paint, and put some on the center of the flower, and use the wire to make a tiny yellow line partway down each of the "down" petals. (I used the florists wire rather than a toothpick, because it was so tiny.)

5: Add some slivers of green scrapbook paper to the irises, leaving some bare wire at the bottom for inserting it into your base.

I added some more leaves after I put the irises in the pond. That way I would be able to see where more leaves were needed.

This is the punch I used.

Here are the irises in the pond.

Yesterday I got to JoAnn's, and bought more little stones, so today I worked some more on the retaining walls for a while, and also played around with making more flowers. I'll show those tomorrow. I found a neat way to make leaves!

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.

Slate floor and dias for the kitchen

The wooden part is a raised platform, and the grey part is where I installed the "slate".

To make it, I cut a bunch of thin cardboard into 1" squares, 1"x1/2" rectangles, and 1/2" squares. I wasn't sure what I wanted for a pattern, so today I played around with them and decided to use these.

Since I wanted it to look rustic, after I glued them down, I sanded the bare cardboard to lift off some of the plies in places, to make it look like chipped slate.

Next, I spackled it to make the grout, smoothing off the spackling compound with an old credit card, and sanded it some more while it was still damp. This separated the plies a little more.

Next I used slightly watered down slate grey to color the slates, and ran the credit card in the grout lines to deepen them.

After the floor was dry, I applied a light coat of water based poly.

In person, they really look like slate, much more than in the photo!

The cardboard sheets I used were quite light weight and were used as stiffeners in packages of Walmarts economy sheet protectors. They seemed to be a very good thickness for this house. (I always save nice pieces of cardboard because it's great for all kinds of crafts)!

I cut them with my Fiskars paper cutter. They dulled the blade really fast, but it didn't matter, because I didn't want them to be perfectly smooth on the edges.