Progress....minis and house

I haven't really posted any photos of my current commission for a while...for no other reason that there really isn't much to see.

All I am doing is gluing on leaf after leaf after leaf. This stage is pretty time consuming as it is often a case of glue 1 on, knock 3 off.

I am limited to doing about 4 branches at a time and leaving them to dry before doing any more.. Any more than that and the chances of knocking off more than I add increases.

Here is a picture of how far I've got.

Doesn't look like there is much more to do...until you see the underneath :-)

You can see parts where it is rather shiny. This is just glue. For some reason, even thought I am using the method I always have, these leaves aren't sticking as well as normal. So I am having to paint glue over all the joins. I'll go over it all afterwords and re-texture and paint it. Not difficult, just adds more time to the making of it :-(

There will be a load more leaves in the gaps I've left. I want to see how it looks with this amount and them place it in situ and reassess the situation.

In between I am painting in real life.

Outside my kitchen window I have a little patio area.

Since we had the dead trees cut down the sun blazes through the windows on this side of the house and makes it unbearably hot in there

So we decided to build an arbor over it....which is actually cheaper than getting a custom blind made for the odd sized kitchen window.

Here is how the area looked when we moved in.

And this is what it looks like when we had the ficus trees cut back.

The plant to the right, blocking the door, is a fake castor oil plant. Luckily we have a door to get out back on the other side of the room so I can let this grow wild for the moment. At some point it will have to be cut right down but for now I can just enjoy it as it is :-)

I was out there this morning painting all the eaves...not fun in 100 degree sun.

Now I am painting the main beams for the arbor. Luckily we have this room at the end of the house that we have no idea what to do with...so for now I can at last paint the beams in here with the A/C on :-)

The ficus grows like weeds so that will be trained to grow over the arbor roof. I also plan on planting some more vines next to it and in planters on the right hand side.

If anyone knows of any heat tolerant, evergreen, fast growing vines that don't require much space for roots please let me know.