Garden Pond

For weeks I have been practically obsessing about my pond. I was looking at pictures on the Internet of life size and miniature ponds. I had found a tutorial a while back on how to do a goldfish for a pond and I was trying to find it again. I had set everything up on the side yard and tried to determine where the pond would go and where it would look most natural. The other day I purchased a bag of smooth river stones from Michael’s Craft Shop and looked around for something to use them with. Carved foam with aluminum foil? No. A paper cup? No.

Finally, I was looking around and found in the closet some oval cups that are to be used for dying eggs. They come in five colors and one of them was green. I say was because I ending up taking the green one and cutting it way down to about half an inch deep and gluing the stones around it. I think it turned out nicely. I then mixed some green and brown paint and coated the bottom of the cup so it wasn't so bright green and resembled the bottom of a pond. I made some pond grasses out of scrapbook paper, but I am not sure I am going to end up with them - they are just placed there for the picture. They may look okay in the pictures, but in real life I am not sure they look realistic.

Now I need to also find some resin to use for the water, grass for the side of the garden, and shrubbery for the garden part and some flowers too. I found an article in Dollhouse Miniature magazine on how to do daylilies with wire and paper and a blog entry for doing a shrubbery with flower foam, spray adhesive, and model railroad foliage, so I am going to do that as well. I also might get a trellis for the side of the house and get some flowers or vines to climb to go along with the smiling face on the side of the house. I have been trying, very unsuccessfully to make flowers out of Fimo clay but I am not very good at that at all (really horrible), so I am going to have to save for flowers and plants for the garden and get them piece meal. I read about using dried coffee ground and tea bag leaves for the soil so I am going to use that around the plants. I had some bricks leftover from doing the chimney on my first house, so I used them for lining the garden from the grass, which you can see in the second picture. I think it’s really coming along.

I was going to put a fish in it, but I can't find the tutorial and I am really very bad at doing the clay, so maybe I won't add that.  My son is very artistic, so maybe I can get him to do it. 
 
Once I get grass down and the shrubbery made I am going to secure the fence in place and then it should be quite complete and I can move on to the interior of the cottage.