Mini Paper Potted Plant

I’ve made no secret of my woeful houseplant skills. Between the bad light  in my house and the ease with which I am distracted, living green things (with the exception of mold) don’t really stand a chance under my care.

So I really like to craft paper plants.  I recently got interested in watercolors, and so naturally the next step was to combine both skills into one new project.

Similar to my miniature hyacinths, I decided to this project on a small scale, partly to test it out, and partly because I really like tiny things. Oh, and I had this cute little jar left over from some pimentos that really needed a new home.

To start this craft, I folded a piece of mixed media paper in half, and sketched the vague shape of a non-existent plant leaf several times. Mixed media paper is a scary sounding title for smooth paper that is heavy enough to hold wet markers or watercolors, but not as textured as true watercolor paper.

I then flipped the sheet over and held it up to a window to make a light box so that I could trace the leaf shape onto the other half of the paper. This doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just a guideline for where the color mixing needs to go.

I then used a couple of shades of green and yellow, combined with a good amount of water to create my leaves. Just like in nature, these do not need to be perfect. I just aimed for the lighter colors in the center and the darker ones to the edges. And I overpainted my sketch marks to that when I trimmed everything out, the leaves would not have any white showing.

I then cut paper wrapped floral wire about 3″ long. Double sided tape is what I used to hold everything together – I applied it to one side of my sheets, placing the wire on top in the locations where the edge of the leaves would be. You need some wire up into the leaves, and some wire sticking out so you “root” the plant in your pot in the end.

Folding carefully, since the sticky tape is very unforgiving, I sandwiched the wires between the two sheets, creating a series of two sided leaves.

I then used scissors to trim just inside the pencil marks. Once they were cut, I pressed the two sides together a little bit more to make sure all the edges were sealed.

I used a wine cork to hold my leaves. I first used a small nail to gouge out small holes where the wires would slot into, and then carefully but firmly pushed the wired leaves in, forming a circle. I hot glued that cork to the bottom of my little glass jar, and then used dried coffee grounds for my “dirt.”

The final touch was hot gluing a little twine around the top.

Pin this so you can find it later if you’d like to make your own mini paper potted plant.

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