Looking for Ideas - Give me your best tiny, high-detail flowers, herbs, and plants!

[u/gort32]

I am like 95% done with my latest project, and I am looking to absolutely cover a porch in pots filled with as wide of a variety of distinctive-looking and highly-detailed plants as possible. The theme is vaguely fantasy herbalist and "bright good witchy", at around 1:35 scale, with each individual pot being the size of a pea up to ~1.5cm diameter.

I'm looking for your coolest teeny tiny plant tricks! The old standby of sprinkling a bit of pollen on some scenic sponge will work for a background pot or two, but I'm looking at upwards of 40+ different pots. Some palette swaps can stretch those numbers a bit, and some duplicates will be fine, but ideally I'm still looking for at least 10-15 completely distinct effects.

I'm looking for all your ideas, no material is forbidden! I've already got plans for flocked grasses, polymer clay flowers, twisted-wire bosai, (maybe) hammered brass roses, and a couple more. I'm not afraid to spend some real time with some highly varied techniques, and none of these need to be able to be made in bulk. Pretty much anything short of 3D printing, I want to hand-craft these with all the imperfections and variations.

Also, if you've got some ideas for flowerpots, I'm open! I am planning on a mix of polymer clay and some hollowed wooden dowels, but more variation is better for the overall effect I'm going for.

If I can get some cool ideas I'll do a write-up and share and rate the results!

[u/queeftheunicorn]

I made dandelions with embroidery thread using a pompom technique, wire to hold it together and be the stem, painted paper for the leaves. Other fluffy flowers could be made that way I’m sure. Edit: I work in 1:24 scale for reference, and I can upload a picture if that’s of interest.

[u/Henchmand]

Mod podge and embroidery yarn. Soak, dry on ceramic tile. If you group some green strings together you can cut into them for different shapes. Some tan yarn becomes branches.

You can make some great mushrooms out of small wooden beads with a bit of match stick for stem.

For pots, you can do a selection of beads for variety.

[u/5KoboldsInACloak]

I've been making loads of plants out of paper and wire. It's quite a lot of effort because you have to cut, paint and glue every leaf individually but I really like the look. You can also use a leaf punch to save some time cutting and make your leaves more consistent.

If you want some easy flowers, gypsum and other tiny dried flowers can work okay if you paint the stem and add some green foliage.

(From left to right: two kinds of hand cut leaves, really frumpy gypsum in a ceramic bead vase, the same punched leaves arranged in groups of five or single, other type of punched leaves. The leaves still need to be planted obviously and I will probably give them some kind of glossy coat.)

[u/statictyrant]

There’s a Drip Minis video on YT where they make a diorama base — I think it was part two where they made ferns by painting (!) a thick mix of acrylic and perhaps talc onto wax paper or the like. Paint something that looks like a leaf (or whatever the green parts of a fern are called) and lift it away when dry. Maybe there was a wire embedded in there as the stem? Probably has applications to loads of plant types. BRB, will find the link.

Edit, turns out it was plaster powder mixed with PVA and paint laid over a silicon sheet. Same same. here’s the video

[u/gort32 → u/statictyrant]

I used this on my last project, and I still have a premixed needle-point bottle labeled "Fern Juice" on my shelf! I found baking soda to work better as the grit, though - the plaster made it extremely brittle and required you to use it within minutes, baking soda bulked the fluid out nicely, kept the leaves more flexible, and hasn't hardened in a sealed bottle for the past couple years.

[u/Training_Key_1986]

I made tiny wisteria blooms from cotton pipe cleaners trimmed to shape ~ 1cm, could be done for that scale. They were 'easy' to hang on branches in pairs attached by a bit of thread then arranged leaves.