Create a Faux Begonia Maculata plant

Hello everyone and happy Friday, Cinnamon here and I am going to show you how I created this Faux Begonia Maculata. I have been obsessing over this plant after seeing it online and I finally ended up settling with a cutting that I found on Etsy. I managed to order a planted one a few days ago but I decided to create a faux one to look at in the meantime. this is perfect for those of us that don't have a green thumb!

Supplies:

• Creative Paperclay
• Small plant pot
• Steel Galvanized wire (22 gauge) 
• Pliers
• Masking Tape
• Pebbles
• Acrylic Paint
• Sand paper
• Moss (optional)
• Sealer, varnish

I started out by taking my pliers and shaping a base to attach my petals to. I made a knot to sit at the bottom of the pot and bent the wire upwards to stick outside of it.

I took pebbles and put them on top of the wire base that I shaped with the pliers. These were added to give some weight to the piece so that it doesn't tip over easily.

Continue on by adding Creative Paperclay on top of the pebbles. The clay layer needs to be about a quarter of an inch thick.

Start taking your wire and bending it into the shape of the leaves with the pliers.

Cover the leaves with masking tape so that you could prepare them for adding clay to them.

Start adding the clay to the leaves. Make sure that you add thin layers so that they mimic that of the real plant.

After allowing the leaves to dry, begin painting them with acrylic paint. The underside of these plants are bright red while the top is a deep green with silvery spots.

I painted the top layer of clay green in the pot as well as the metal stems of the plant. Take your leaves that you painted and stick them into the clay layer that was created in the beginning of this exercise, push them as far down as you can so that they don't fall out of the pot. 

Paint the silver/white dots on top of the leaves. Add a sealer to protect the paint from chipping when you are done adding the color.

I had some moss left over from one of my projects. You can top your piece off with cotton or whatever you would like to cover up the area where the leaves meet the pot.

Here is the piece next to my cutting. I am anxiously awaiting the real plant that is traveling through the mail but this one makes a good stand in for the meantime! 

Thank you all once again for stopping by, and I hope that you enjoyed today's tutorial! You can find Creative Paperclay® at the following retailers Creative Paperclay® Online Store, Michael's, Amazon, Joann's.

See more of my work at Melandolly.com, catch updates on 

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