Christine de Beer - effortless floral craftsman
Add plant material and a wire support to sisal armatures
- 22 March 2017
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See the Tutorial below for detailed instructions on how to use sisal to make armatures.
Sisal armatures are rigid and ready to use as is, but if it needs to travel to a location before you design with it or if it is going to be handled often, it is safer to add a chicken wire frame to the design.
Cut the chicken-wire to fit your shape. Add a wire frame if it suits your design
Slip the sisal around the frame and secure with wire
And glue in the additional plant material
See the Tutorial below for detailed instructions on how to make the leaf curls
More design ideas:
Fit the chicken-wire inside the disk shape.
Dip the tepals of a protea flower in thinned glue and scatter...
...to conceal the wire
See the Tutorial below for more detailed instructions on how to peel a protea flower.
Or cover a few disks with Protea bracts and Leukadendron leaves
Or wrap the shape in a sphere of chicken-wire
and dip some Tortum snippets in glue and scatter all over the frame and sisal
Or place the wire inside the shape and wrap in copper wire and shape.
I used a copper pot scrubber that I unravelled to make twig garlands, curls and baubles with. See the Tutorials below for more detailed instructions
Weave the copper twig garlands around and through the armature frame
The armatures are now ready to design with. I placed my armatures on three legged acrylic tubes. See the Tutorial below for more detailed instructions on how to design on three legs
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Tutorials
I purchase a huge roll of sisal string to use... sometimes as string, but mostly I unravel it for the fibers
Wrap thin, glue soaked sisal fibers around a balloon or ball to create a barely there armature
The sturdy Protea leaves holds it shape even when dried when pinned into place
Customize sisal armatures by adding a wire skeleton and interesting bits of plant material
Peel away the tepals and bracts from a Protea flower hear to make a large composite flower orb
This is a fast and easy way to hang test tubes in a design
Up-cycle a pot scrubber to get a huge roll of very pretty copper wire
Curl the wire at irregular intervals to create a natural wire tendril similar to that of a passion fruit plant
When in doubt, always give your armature three legs. Two legs are simply not enough and four legs will wobble if it is even slightly off balance.
Using fruit, berries, flowers, leaves and grasses to naturally stain design details for floral art relies on the same techniques as using paint or any other dye.
Apart from avoiding the noise popping a balloon makes this is also a less violent way to deflate a balloon when you make Papier Mache items
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