One of the few remaining items from my earlier dollhouse days is a book on making miniature plants out of florist tape called Miniature House Plants by Ruth Hanke. I made an elephant ear plant from a DVD called Master Miniaturists: Flowers & Plants. It has a similar approach.
There are a ton of house plants in this 1988 book, and I know I’ve made at least one of them before. This time around, I opted for the snake plant.
For the dirt, I glued in a piece of styrofoam into a ceramic pot. I then covered the surface with tacky glue and sprinkled on earl grey tea. It has a nice peat moss quality.
In the book example, while the author did include painting the rough stripes of the plant, she didn’t include the wide light green outer edges so I added those based on the real deal. :D I then sealed the leaves with Delta Ceramcoat Satin Varnish.
I poked holes in the styrofoam base, clipped the long wires and glued each leaf in place. The plant stand is a McQueenie Miniatures kit I made previously.
I rather like how this plant turned out. :D I think I’ll be making a few more examples from this book.
Note: for those of you who work in half scale, this book includes both 1″ and 1/2″ scale patterns.