For the third annual Simply Elemental outdoor art installation at Hahn Horticulture Garden, I decided to decorate the garden sprite statue with flower petals. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, she is called "Maid in the Mud," is a little over 5 foot tall, and stands in the shade garden with quiet dignity.
Here are the tools I used to create the flower petals. The wire I used was aluminum electric fencing wire which turned out to be perfect for the project. All the paint colors were applied to both sides of the uncut roll of shelf lining foam. Leaving residual paint on the roller in between colors created some lovely shades and helped make the color choices look cohesive. A rotating wheel cutter from my sewing space made cutting out the petals super easy. The last photo above shows the petals arranged just to see how many I had and how the colors looked together. The wavy petal is already fitted with the wire to test how to shape it.
When all the petals were finished, my friend, Mina, helped me wire and sort them by size. Once we figured out how to shape them into a sort of necklace to go around the neck of the sprite, I connected them all together and we headed to the garden. This part was easy! The necklace was placed and hooked together in minutes. Mina had suggested a butterfly for the head so we constructed that before hand and quickly put it in place. We arranged all the petals by shaping the wire and turning petals over to get the best color arrangement. We thought a little something more was needed and went home to create the last touch which was small hanging petals appearing to fall from the bloom.
