Found a new product for making plants

I just got done ordering some new planning kits, and these should be a huge help in the realism of my dioramas. The kits are from I bought a Japanese company, but I have found 3 different companies that sell something similar, one in Italy and one somewhere else in Europe, and all are about the same except fot the number of leaves and the Italian company is already painted, I bought the Japanese ones are not.

The kit consists of a thick, high quality sheet of paper, on which is a laser cut out of different plant and tree leaves and or flowers. I have to make any stems for the plants, or trunk and branches for the trees. I purchased three kits, a tropical vine-kit, with three species of Philodendron, and sago palm fronds from a, a bamboo-kit, that should give me 11 individual plants to put into a small group, and an olive tree. These kits contain only the leaves, so I get to do the part I like, sculpting the stems for the bamboo, the stalk and roots for the Philodendron, and the trunk and branches for the olive tree. There are kits that I eventually seval want to make, but for starters I got three to see if I can make them look good. When the kits come I have to paint the paper, remove the leaves and then attach them to whatever I make as far as stem and branches. The paper is supposed to be sort of stronger type paper, and it is easily shaped to give the leaves a natural curve, not like writing paper, but but thicker and stronger still, reading reviews of the product it is still paper and will tear if you are not careful.


I have included the first of my drawings, to use as guidlines for the kits, I do not think I can start sculpting them until the kits arrive because I do not have the actual size of the individual leaves and if I make the stem too big or two small I have to start over so I am just part going to wait until the kits come to start that. I should expect to get them before friday as I chose option 2 to 3 day priority mail.

Anyway, here are the drawings I did for the sago palm and philodendron, sorry for the quality, as I mentioned in an earlier post I shake because of a side effect to the drugs so it is very hard to draw and even harder to hold the camara.
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Well, that is the first set of ideas, if these turn out eventually I will order more, I want about 4 sets of bamboo, several of the trees, and some of the reeds and foxtail sets. These are going on the Indian / Asian diorama, except for the olive tree, which I'm not sure why I chose that one as I am not going to use it in any of the dioramas, it just looked to be the easiest tree to make. There are 19 tropical plants and trees that I want to eventually make, if these turn out I will make a much bigger order. All of the plants and trees I chose (except for the olive tree) are native to India so if this works I will have a bunch of really cool plants to add to the diorama. Mostly I want to add small plants that I can make myself, as with the African diorama, all of the medium and big stuff will be custom made by Danny's model maker.

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Well, since I want a photo journal of the build diorama I did some work last night that I was not going to do. I do not have the actual leaf sizes so I can not really make the stalks for the philodendron, or the bases of the sago palm, but what I did was this. First I know the scale is 1:30, which is smaller then my scale (1:22) but it gave me the adult size of the leaves and stems so I decided to sculpt some. The clay I use has to be baked to harden, so even if I have made them too small or too large, I can easily change anything right now, I wont bake it until I have the leaves to make sure the size I am using is correct. At that size plant the plants I am going to make will not be full sized, but that is not an issue, for an animal figure it is very important, but for a, especially a juvinile plans it is not important, and as for The Philodendron I just wont have the very biggest leaves represented, but most will be big enough for what I am doing.

Well you have seen the drawings of the finished plants in an earlier post for this thread. What I did was to use those drawings to model a Philodendron creeping stalk with roots, and a sego palm base. I thought it was going to be harder to do, the palm is very hairy, and the creeping root has a distinct pattern as it grows and the old leaves fall off I used a sculpting tool to make the hair, I'm not 100 % on it, so I may change it a little to make it Hairi, but it is not really bad, and would pass after painted. for the Philodendron I made a pattern out of a piece of wood, carved into the shape the end of the fall leaf pattern, then added some of the creeping roots. Again, I bake it until I can change the size, but I am very happy overall with the results, and painting should be easy as there is not much mixing. Sago has a deep, rich chocolate brown, and the Philodendron is green, with yellow spots where the old leaf fell away.

Here is a photo of each, they are all white so they do not show up great, but they are detailed enough Sun product you can see the patterns and visualize the end.

First the sago palm base
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Here is the Philodendron
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Hope you enjoy, please feel free to comment or make suggestions

Looks great Phil. I can't wait to see them painted and put together. It will be neat to see how well the leaves work out.

I know I'm not exactly on the topic but I try to load the pic from photobucket... And it works Philter4, it works

You just need to paste the "Direct link" on Photobucket and put it in the "Image" window on Schleichtiersammler.

To be more on the Topic now, I can't wait to see the new plants and the leaves you are waiting.

I'm sure the 1/30 scale would not be a problem for the bushes and plants. IMHO, for your kind of diorama, the most important with vegetation is that one can feel the Asian, Indian or African mood.

But I know we will see it soon :)

Thanks Kiki, here goes, here is a photo of the langurs that I took the other day, but didn't upload.
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Well, when I preview it comes up, but so did the others, hope this works

The langurs look fantasic, and your trees you're making are looking really good.

Thanks HK, I will be posting some very long and drawn out posts of ideas and photos as I want to make a very detailed journal of the whole process this time. I do this more for me than anything else but I hope it allows for all of you to make suggestions for improvements along the way, something I did in the African diorama that made it so much better then what I had done, especially Willy's thoughts to fill in the grass flats, if you remember from early posts it was very thin, but now it is full and I am very happy with the results.

Kiki thanks to you as well for your suggestions on how to get the photos to just come up, it has worked well so far.

The trees look excelent, you are doing an amazing job!

Your drawings and idea's look great Phil!
I know you want to do your things perfect, so the end-result will be good, no doubts there.
I hope your leaves arrive soon, on that you can proceed on this work , and finish those trees soon.
Just a guess, this other European country is Norway???

The company that sells the Japanese brand was Norway, but the company producing a similar product was the Czech Republic. I did however find an American company that sells the kits for a little more money, but I don't have to wait for shipping. If I buy in bulk, which all depends on how hard these are to put together, and how they look when finished, I will use the Norway company because the savings are substantial, even eith the shipping costs, but to order a few I like the fact that I have the product within a week.