April Showers Bring May Flowers

I spent all of last Sunday working on this iris kit from MJ Miniatures. Of all the iris kits I'd seen, this one looked the most realistic.   I quickly realized I'd gotten in a little over my head.

Flower making is one of my least favorite projects to begin with, and this iris kit was easily the most finicky flower kit I've ever attempted. The petal paper was thin and easily soaked  up my purple wash of paint. But because the paper was so thin, I accidently ripped/mangled quite a few of the damp petals, even using my softest paintbrush. I ended up with enough petals to make 12 big blossoms, which wasn't bad considering the number I had to throw away!

I "planted" the iris in this painted wooden vase. I didn't want to make the flowers permanant, so I just stuck the flowers in a piece of styrofoam. I painted the top of the foam brown to simulate dirt.

My favorite detail of the finished flowers (and also the step that nearly drove me over the edge) was the snippet of tan tissue arournd the base of each blossom and bud.

Here are the irises in place in the music room. The pink and white flowers are all from SDK kits. The SDK kits are punched from pre-colored paper, so they looked a bit flat next to the irises. I gave the pink flowers a quick, uneven wash using pink and orange tones to make them look varigated. They were cut for a much smaller vase originally, so I had a little trouble aranging the short stems.