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Plant MONSTER. posted:For fun though, I made a little dried flower basket in hard oasis foam. Wallet posted:I'm sure I will. My crocus are just flowering now so growing season is only getting started here. Been loving around with a fish tank in the new office I set up recently which is a different kind of plant art, I guess.  oh yea those both kill. Every now and then I look up the latest IAPLC thanks for reminding me
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Mar 26, 2022 18:09
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| # ? May 8, 2024 22:44 |
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I'm back sooner than expected. A couple of years ago I made these for one of my walls:     And then after someone offered me a deal on a chunk of wood I had favorited on ebay and dismissed as being way too big, I made a much larger one for my living room (the panel is a little under 4 feet tall for scale):       They're more weekend project than hot glue torture and I thought the effort:result ratio was pretty good. I never got around to it but at some point I meant to post them in this thread because despite a number of people having mentioned an interest in messing with this stuff there remains a suspicious lack of photos  (Just) reposting old poo poo is kind of lame though and I had some rocks and some plants that I wanted to mess around with anyway, so I decided to take another crack at something similar for an empty wall in my office. Maybe someone will follow along. I've tried to note the things that would be different if you were doing this with wood (which I'd probably recommend since it's easier to work with). Off we go! The first step is also the most important and time consuming. You need to pick out the thing or things what the plant stuff will go in. I would suggest something with a generous selection of orifi*. When I did it with wood I got a couple chunks off ebay and a couple off Etsy. You might get better results if you add "aquarium" or "terrarium" to your search terms. These guys on Etsy often have neat pieces for not a ton of money but I'm sure there are many others. I've never gotten around to it but I've been tempted to pick up some little ones that are flat on one side to make some sweet little permanent desktop flower arrangements. This go around I rescued some pieces of rock from a fish tank  Anyway, once you got your bits the first second step is to lay the poo poo out and fiddle around until you're satisfied (or done trying, whatever).     Very exciting, I know. One of them kind of looks like a rabbit. Then I figured out the sizing for the plaques. I poked a couple bits of plant poo poo in at this point to get an idea of how big they might end up.     With driftwood you can (and I did) leave this step for later since attaching it will be as simple as driving a few screws in from behind (I used hanger bolts when I did the really big one). Last time I used some (stained) poplar for the plaques, but this time I went with some scrap pine I had laying around. I'm sure I will regret using such a soft wood after I gently caress one of them up in a week/month/year. I'll keep you posted. Anyway saws, glue, sanders, and routers sawed, glued, sanded, and routed. I didn't take photos of them in action because I'm not a pervert. Also masking tape.     The rocks probably wouldn't survive masonry screws so the masking tape is to protect me from loving things up too badly when I epoxy them in place. Which I did. I considered listing my creations on Etsy as post-modern commentary on the subordination of the natural to the manufactured but I just took the masking tape off and waited for the epoxy to cure instead. Now almost plants. If you're doing this with wood you're likely going to need/want to drill some of the natural holes deeper so that they'll hold whatever you're going to poke in there. Depending on how fragile the wood is you may want to do this with a pin vice or something instead of an electric drill. If you have as many holes as I did (don't be gross) you might find it useful to mark them with toothpicks because it can get hard to keep track of what angles your holes are actually pointing otherwise. Doing this with stone I would have also liked to drill some of the natural holes deeper but they don't seem to make masonry drill bits that small and I'm not patient enough to melt my way through with regular ones. I was planning to go more minimal with the plant material on these ones anyway. I did widen things out in a few places with a dremel. Then actually plants. For the wood ones I used almost exclusively PVA but because I didn't drill holes it was mostly hot glue this time. And that's the whole loving thing. Some of them turned out better than others; I haven't put hanging hardware on yet but they'll hopefully even each other out.  It doesn't show up well in the photo but since I had it out anyway I messed around with using epoxy to make it look like parts of the front of the rock in this one is permanently wet which worked pretty goodly. I'll try to get a better one when I hang them up or something.  The stuff on top is some juniper that didn't take up the dye when I preserved it very well but there's something I like about the brown with the weird aqua tips.  Kind of a bad photo but I don't feel like going back into the basement right now and I think this one is my least favorite anyway. One of them has to be.  And bunny. *I know this is the wrong plural because I have an English degree. I find orifices unsatisfying which is why I got it in the first place.
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Apr 4, 2022 00:13
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Posting at myself here, but they made it on the wall.    
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Apr 5, 2022 20:23
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They're all so beautiful and I'm amazed at your creativity! This is just stuff that's been arranged and glued onto a wreath. But tis the season for colors and stuff. 
Plant MONSTER. fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Apr 5, 2022 |
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Apr 5, 2022 21:24
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Plant MONSTER. posted:This is just stuff that's been arranged and glued onto a wreath. But tis the season for colors and stuff. I like the pinks together. There's some Athyrium that actually get pretty close to that color. Reminds me of this sweet Dryopteris cultivar I just saw in the Plant Delights catalogue (not cold hardy here, boo): 
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Apr 5, 2022 22:38
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I keep re-reading this entire thread over and over; I cannot stop feeling inspired by every post. Thanks to everyone who's shared on here.
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Apr 29, 2022 18:10
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I really wish I did more naturalistic looking work like Wallet does. God drat everything they make is crazy pretty. Been working with a lot of dried items at work lately. Been putting together a few arrangements for pick up.   The combined efforts of my coworkers, my boss and myself  The one with the three teal corndogs, the three with the green palm spear backdrops directly behind the teal corndog'd one, the three mini ones in the terracotta pot and the ones shown above are ones I've created.
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May 27, 2022 18:56
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Plant MONSTER. posted:I really wish I did more naturalistic looking work like Wallet does. Just do it IMO. People that come to my condo keep asking me if I sell this crap so there must be a market for it. I've been doing more experimenting with preserving stuff myself and while some stuff is off the table because once you preserve it it's too floppy to hold itself up unless you can break it down into smaller pieces, most things I've tried work fine soaking for a couple weeks with a 1:2 glycerine (you can get it on Amazon) to water ratio and a bunch of food dye (more than you think you need). Plant MONSTER. posted:Been working with a lot of dried items at work lately. Been putting together a few arrangements for pick up. I like the arrangements—the purple one has a sort of Dr. Seuss vibe that I'm digging—though the stuff that's extremely dyed always looks weird to me (like the chasmanthium or whatever that is vs the echinops). Are dried arrangements popular this time of year? I'd have assumed it was seasonal. Wallet fucked around with this message at 21:19 on May 27, 2022 |
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May 27, 2022 21:16
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I did another one for my stairwell. I had thought about doing it a long time ago but decided I didn't really want to gently caress around with mitering boxes with 126° angles to match the pitch of the stairs. As the lower hanging fruit has now been plucked, I revisited the idea. Same general construction as the hexagons with a floral foam base.   Then a bunch of glue and moss and poo poo.  The boxes are relatively flat but the house is 200 years old so the walls are not. I need to make some spacers to try and even things out. Also need to clean the frames that got foam dust and poo poo on them.    The lighting in the stairwell is not the brightest.  Someone should clean the stairs, really. I got lazy half way up and the pictures of the rest of them came out blurry. Still have some more little things to poke in and some stuff that's still soaking up glycerine, but close enough. Also needs some art or something hung on the rest of the wall above it. Wallet fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jun 10, 2022 |
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Jun 10, 2022 20:37
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i didn't see that post. Jiminy Christmas Wallet!! That's amazing work!  I built these two wreaths with Limonium that I dried, plus some preserved botanicals from Japan. I am severely underpaid lol.
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Aug 29, 2022 15:21
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Plant MONSTER. posted:i didn't see that post. Jiminy Christmas Wallet!! That's amazing work! I love the texture of the first one, and the little yellow accents in there. With all the pictures in this thread I bet you could get a job primarily doing flower arranging instead of whatever they're underpaying you for now. I've been mostly making stuff out of wood lately; I did a bunch of preserving foliage earlier this year and it all worked just fine as far as keeping the foliage supple but food dye doesn't seem to take consistently so I think I may have to find something else to get the color. Probably try some procion dyes at some point since they're quite affordable and I think they should work. Wallet fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Sep 1, 2022 |
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Sep 1, 2022 13:18
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Been a while. Back on the paper flower making train. Spent most of my free time for a month stocking up on different roses. I've been arranging them with dried flowers both purchased or foraged.      
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Nov 27, 2022 17:58
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Plant MONSTER. posted:Been a while. Back on the paper flower making train. Spent most of my free time for a month stocking up on different roses. I've been arranging them with dried flowers both purchased or foraged. I missed this when you posted it but your roses are killer. Do you have an etsy store yet?
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Dec 9, 2022 15:20
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| # ? May 8, 2024 22:44 |
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Wallet posted:I missed this when you posted it but your roses are killer. Do you have an etsy store yet? I do! Sadly, I tend to do most of my sales off-site, so my shop has no sales. I'm clearly a marketing genius.
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Dec 9, 2022 20:15
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