MUCH HAS BEEN ADDED

When I had a bit of time while visiting my daughter I made leaves. I made the mistake of packing the work in a box I was having sent and with snow storms causing delays I didn't get it until a couple of weeks ago. I was able to do some other work on other areas of the scene and this is how things have worked out

At the very back is a planter box type area and the plant material I used was a moss I found at a Dollar store. It was perfect! I planned to punch some heavy card to make the area in front of that but a brown foam meat tray with a design embossed in it was so much easier and worked well. I also used brown foam for the "soil" and white foam for the drainage area. This "free" material has so many possibilities and uses in miniature. 

I made more platforms for the flowers and had a lot of fun creating more of them from acetate containers. This is how I have done them:

Any clear plastic package material seems to work and it doesn't even have to be flat. I cut freehand circles in different sizes and heated my toaster oven to 400ºF. I happened to find a stainless steel Tbsp. measure which was perfect for shaping but before I found that I used foil shaped into a cup. Now comes the fun part. As you can see the cut out can be quite irregular. I put it in the oven and in just a few SECONDS it had curled, shrunk, and then flattened out. You MUST watch it closely as it is less than 10 seconds. Grab it with tweezers or hemostats and quickly put it into your shaper (my Tbsp.) and push it to the bottom. It is not so hot that you can't touch it with your fingers so you can easily flute the form but this must be done quickly before it cools to much.

At the same time I cut off the bottom of a plastic water bottle and trimmed it to a flower shape. I used some Sharpie Pens to color it and after I baked the flat piece I baked this one.

Here are the results of two clear disks and the bottle flower I showed above.

I made the discovery that if I painted the color I wanted to show on the inside first on the outside, then I could paint the outer color when the first was dry. That way the flowers are shiny. I am currently debating about re-painting the ones I had already done. All of the new ones were painted with at least one coat of paint so tomorrow I might be able to finish them.

While the oven was hot I thought I would do some experiments with other materials. I took one of the foam tray cups and put it in the oven on a piece of foil. I thought I might end up with a gooey mess, but it actually all melted down to a textured flat that I could cut and paint. I think it looks like pavers or a nice textured siding that I could use on the outside when I put together the building.

These are pictures of the egg cup that I baked in the oven and the end result. It has been trimmed slightly and I have painted it. I think I will try the brown foam which should look more like stone.