1:12 Scale Lavender Improvement

I played around some more and I'm liking the results much better than my first attempt at creating lavender. I can see that flower soft has potential to make some pretty little flowers, but its not very good for making 1:12th scale lavender, at least not the way I'd done it.

I'd seen a tutorial online and the lady had used craft sand in the tutorial, she had bought it pre-coloured but I couldn't find any that was 'chunky' enough. I stumbled across a bottle of decorative sand in The Range for about £1.30, it looked like a milk bottle, but its full of sand and the grains looked perfect. So I brought it home and using alcohol inks: - Amethyst, Purple Twilight, Eggplant and a touch of Indigo I dyed it to a shade of lavender that I was happy with, then I made a small batch a little darker and mixed the two together to give some variation.

I created two kinds of lavender 'English Lavender' and 'French Lavender' aka Butterfly Lavender, the process for the French Lavender is simple, I die cut some small petals in lilac tissue paper and glued them to the end of some of my florist wire, then added glue to the top of the wire stem and sprinkled the purple craft sand on it, shook off the excess and left it to dry. The process for English Lavender was the same, without the 'butterfly' top part and I add some random blobs of glue on the stems to simulate smaller flower buds.

I left both lots of the flowers to dry overnight and this evening I put some air drying clay into the base of my pots. Having earlier painted the 3D printed pot that Si made for me with some Tonic Nuvo Acrylic Paint that's been in my paint box for a while, I love how it looks, although I seem to have got some finger marks on from either the clay or the 'soil' I made, but that can be covered up.

I mixed some Olive Green Nuvo paint and some White and dry brushed the leaves on the butterfly lavender and all the stems with it and left it to dry.  I had ordered some craft sand off ebay, but when it arrived this morning it was so fine, no way would it be useful for making lavender.

I didn't want to waste it so I used alcohol ink again, this time: - Rust, Mushroom, Ginger and Pitch Black, to create a sort of soil for the top of the pots. Once I'd placed all the green matter in the pots I filled the gaps with PVA and then sprinkled my sand soil on top shaking off the excess. I would have liked it to look more earthy brown but what I have will do for now and I have made absolutely loads of it, so it will last a while.

I think if I get some Ground Expresso alcohol ink or another darker brown shade I can darken the soil colour, that's the beauty of using alcohol ink, you can add more. Make sure when you're using it though to ensure your room is well ventilated and leave the coloured sand to dry after colouring, this will allow the alcohol to evaporate. I'm going to make a small black of black chunky sand as an aside, I think it would brilliant sprinkled in to the centre of die cut and stamped poppies and flowers that have black centres.

FYI the craft sand has a shimmery effect that's not full on sparkle or glitter but the grains do catch the light, I did struggle with the greenery, I didn't get it to sit right in the pots but with time it will get easier, I'm not a flower arranger lol! then next flower to attempt will be calendula, I felt that the ones made at the weekend had petals that were too chunky, so I've bought some orange tissue paper and I'm going to try and see if that makes them look more delicate, I kind of like this gardening in minature lark, of and yes I did add a couple of drops of lavender oil to the air drying clay and they little lavender plants smell like lavender lol! 😉