A Sweet Lil’ DIY for Fall in the Miniature Garden

OMG! It’s going to be sunny and dry for the next four days! Yippee! Okay, maybe I’ll let the miniature garden dry out for two days and then book the weekend for gardening. See what we have to do here the Pacific Northwest? We need to make dates with our garden and hope the weather cooperates. Working soil when it’s wet will destroy all the little micro stuff in the soil and it’ll become dirt. So, we wait. And hope. And make miniatures. Lol!

But before I clean up all the leaves in the mini garden, let’s do a Thanksgiving Day DIY! This one came from a combination of craft projects found on Melissa’s The Empress of Dirt blog and Patti’s Garden Matter blog. Both blogs are very popular and filled with a ton (and that’s not a joke – really, how do they do it all?) home and garden DIYs, creative decorating ideas, yummy recipes and just about everything handmade. They make me want to quit my day job and play all day.

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I took Melissa’s Falling Leaf Project but preserved and mounted the leaves like Patti’s Leaf Garland Project and I came up with a Miniature Leaf Chandelier. It was so fun and easy to do and I’ll think you’ll get the idea when you see the photo and the ingredients!

You’ll need:

– The smallest leaves you can find in bright colors

– Modge Podge (I use the outdoor one.)

– Paintbrush

– Wire, optional 2 sizes, thick & thin

– Ribbon

– Wire snips

– Flat-nosed pliers

– Scissors

– Hot glue gun with glue

These are from full-sized trees. I just looked a bit harder for the small ones.

Preserve the leaf: I preserved the leaves with Outdoor Modge Podge and it helped painting one side of the leaf at a time and letting it dry instead of trying to do the whole leaf at once. Use a piece of plastic or waxed paper to paint on and they won’t stick.

Get wired: I choose that fun green wire because its easy to bend and I wanted the green to show through for a extra splash of color, but you can easily cover the wire with more leaves. Use flat-nosed pliers so you don’t leave a ding-mark (a technical term) in the soft wire.

Tie it off: Tie the ribbon on before you start gluing so you can hide it with the leaves. Instead of the ribbon, you can use invisible thread or fishing line to create a floating chandelier.

Glue it to it: And I used hot-glue to put on the leaves. I don’t plan on leaving this outside so I wasn’t worried about weatherproofing it.

More to make: Find our previous Thanksgiving DIYs here. You can make garden stake and a miniature cornucopia for your mini Thanksgiving table!

1. Irish moss 2. Pieris japonica ‘Little Heath’ 3. Nana Hinoki Cypress 4. Euonymous microphylla 5. Elf Dwarf Spruce 6. Variegated Euonymous microphylla. Click the picture to see the plants in our online store sorted by light or by zone. Not all plants are available at all times.

Find the unusual: See pretty red chair, custom painted right here in our studios here. And the wee pot with the Sedum cuttings here.

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Original article and pictures take https://minigardener.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/a-sweet-lil-diy-for-fall-in-the-miniature-garden/ site