The January challenge on the Yahoo! Quarter Connection group was to start and finish a kit or project that hadn't been started before. I chose Sue Herber's Petal's Garden which in her version looks like the picture on the right.
To accept the challenge, I first had to upload a picture of the kit in its unfinished form which I did. You can see all the nice pieces laid out in the picture to the left.
Then the fun began. I first had to decide if I was going to go with Sue's color scheme or find one of my own. To decide that, I picked out some paints that I liked and put samples on a scrap piece of wood. Then because the directions said that I'd be adding a wash on top of the paint, I made two washes and put them over the colors.
I finally decided to go with a butter cream primary color and a Lumiere turquoise for the accent color. Now it was time to paint.
I hate painting since I'm uncomfortable with it. So the painting took much longer than it should have. I also decided to wallpaper the inside even though it doesn't show very much. I'd gotten a Xyron Creative Station for Christmas and really wanted to try it out on something. But I didn't have any paper (which might surprise some people who think I have too much paper) that I thought was suitable.
Doing something else one weekend, we parked in front of Art Ellis which has an incredible paper supply. There I found the perfect paper.
Slowly I was getting supplies together as I painted the base coat of butter cream on the sides, top, bottom, wheel spokes, wheelbarrow body, and step pieces. I was also painting the turquoise on the outer wheels, top railing, shelves, axles (even though they didn't need to be painted), wheelbarrow wheel, and hand rails.
Having painted everything, I made two more decisions, to use Flower Soft instead of the landscaping material Sue had included in the kit and to make a new sign for my cart instead of using the one in the kit. I have the Spring and Summer mixtures as well as the light green, and I've been wanting to try them to see how well they work.
After I got everything painted and glued together, I thought the cart looked a little bare without some landscaping, so I took a small piece of thick matting and created a road and fields to either side. I made the road out of Golden's Clear Granular Gel, but in retrospect, I think I would have been happier with using Coarse or Extra Coarse Pumice Gel. I also added three HO railroad size dogs to the scene that I bought at Bruce's Train Shop years ago.
All in all, I'm pleased with my flower cart and am now ready to finish the potting shed with Flower Soft which is absolutely wonderful to work with.
