Fun with Flowers

My sister was clearing out her floral arranging supplies recently and asked if I could use any of it.  I remembered some helpful advice from a diorama maker featured in King & Country's Collector Magazine: "Guy says his one 'golden rule' for collectors wanting to build their own displays and vignettes is... 'Think twice before you throw anything away...you might just need it sometime!'" (King & Country Collector Magazine, Issue #25, Winter 2009.  Available at https://www.kingandcountry.com/collector-magazine/)

Needless to say, a sizable amount of her flowery discards were added to my stash. They proved to be very versatile.

Some flowers can be cut into shrubby plants and types of ground cover.  The trees in this picture show this use for flowers.  Just about every tree now has a base covered with plants and bushes of this type.

The stalks of multiple flowers together on the same stem (called floral bushes), make interesting and textured tree trunks, when stripped of leaves and flowers.  I glued them together to create a log pile.  Unfortunately, these were all that I had and my pile is rather small.


Johnny Tremain may be glad that the logs have been delivered pre-cut, saving him the trouble of going to the forest and cutting them himself.

Some flowers are attached to the stem by plastic pipes.  When cut, these pipes resemble the shape of a bottle.  Gluing together six of them produced a nice effect of clustered bottles.  They were painted with Testors enamel and coated in old nail polish to give them a bit more gloss.

I hope that you enjoyed this little tour through a few uses of floral arranging supplies as miniature scenery.  It is worth mentioning that many of these supplies (such as small flower pieces and "log" stems) can be discarded by floral arrangers who do not need them for their projects.  This creates a nice synergy...and makes sure nothing goes to waste!

All scenery is shown with 54mm figures.  It could be used with other sizes as well (the floral stem logs would be quite formidable next to 28mm figures, for example).