When Was the Last Time You Looked At Plants?
I mean had a really long, hard, good look at plants? From the thickness of their foliage, width of their stems, hardiness of their shoots, to the wide variety of colors and textures of their blooms. For many of us in the US, we just got done or are in the process of finishing that labor of love of our gardenscapes. We tilled, sowed, planted, and now the hard part … we wait. But in the meantime, there’s a lot we can learn from our plant friends.
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Hi there, I’m Katie. For those of you who don’t know me, I run KatersAcres, a little whimsical sculpting universe where everything has personality, goes on adventures, and half the time is made up. And you know what … that’s just the way I like it. But for as much as my things are “made up” there’s a huge element of realism beneath the whimsy. It may be in color combinations, texture, patterns, symbolism, or a wide variety of other things. Why? It’s because a long time ago I learn to really look at what was around me. All month long we are going to be taking a journey with plants. Learning from them, really looking at them, appreciating their beauty, and by the end working with them to appreciate them and study them to create a few things for our own gardens with their help.
Plants & Polymer Clay
There’s a huge amount of artists who already use plants as their primary source of inspiration when creating from Christi Friesen, Doreen Kassel, Stephanie Kilgast, and many others. Whether you are using plants as a source of inspiration, making faux plants from clay [totally awesome because they are 100% unkillable], or adding decor made from clay to planters or gardens; plants & polymer clay is a beautiful marriage that you need to explore if you haven’t already.
Let’s Take Notice of Some Plants
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What do you notice about this Fuchsia? Pay attention to the way its branches hang, the fullness of the plant, the thinness of the leaves and uprightness of the leaf stems. Now notice the flowers and how they hang, their buds and the way they form, even the tiny ones are still oval in shape. Even minute details matter. The leave are the darkest of green, but yet the underside is brighter with reddish stems….
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Now let’s look at one of my favorites, my Butterfly Bush. This is a gorgeous plant with long oval leaves and huge spiraling flowers in cone-like shapes with tiny individual flowers that bloom each on their own filling out the cone shape one by one. This plant attracts bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies and I love it! I actually have two one in this purple berry color and one in a dark grape color [it hasn’t bloomed yet]. They stems are strong and thick, but do not stand, the flop all over the place, but it is a hardy bush. It’s the flowers and how they bloom that are the most interesting however. While the leaves would be easy, replicating this flower cone in clay would be a tedious process.
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And what about everyone’s favorite [a seemingly new trend around our neck of the woods] the succulent. With the popularity of succulents and succulent gardens on the rise, it is not surprising that many people want to make succulents from polymer clay. There are hundreds of species of succulents and people love them because not only are they easy to make, but they are wonderful to keep as gardens because they require little to no watering and are gorgeous potted friends. Look at the huge variety of leaves, colors, textures, shapes, and sizes of leaves, not to mention the shading. Va-va-voom gorgeous!!!
Possibilities
What are the possibilities? There are limitless. Truly. They are as many as your imagination can hold! From figurines, bird feeders, garden clocks, rain meters, pots, faux plants, plant markers, and so much more. I’ll be making lots of samples and introducing you to some great tutorials in two weeks.
Thanks for joining me today; see you next week!
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