My original plan for the spring portion of the four seasons roombox was to make a flowerbed along the wall. Once the scenes were laid out there wasn’t a lot of space for that, plus I would have needed to carry over the flowerbed into the other months, which I didn’t want to do. Instead I decided to use a planter.

I looked high and low for a wine cask style planter in half scale and couldn’t find any — so I made one! I started out with a large 1″ scale planter from Miniatures.com. It was sold in a pair so even if one got messed up, I would have another one as a back-up.

These are made out of resin. I used a utility knife and a thin saw to slice off the bottom.

Then I sanded the bottom edge with the disc sander to make it flat. Now I had a planter that was the right height, but with a hole at the bottom.

I put it on a piece of strip wood and traced around the inside of the hole.

I cut the piece out roughly with the utility knife.

Then I sanded to the pencil line until it fit inside the planter. It’s not a perfect fit, but you’ll never see this.

Here’s the result. Much more to scale!

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There are a lot of leaf punches available for scrapbooking but they’re usually too big for dollhouse stuff, especially half scale. I went on a hunt for alternatives and found punches for tiny leaves at a European store named Green Stuff World. They have supplies for wargaming miniatures that can be used for dollhouse landscaping, too. (They also have a lot of steampunk stuff!)

The one I bought makes four different leaf styles each time you punch the paper. Here are some of the tiny leaves next to leaves punched out with a regular scrapbooking punch. Much better for half scale!

I used the punch on a piece of fall leaves scrapbook paper, after first painting the blank side of the paper red. I’m not finding this paper online so I’m not sure if it’s still available. It’s made by Recollections. I bought a couple of sheets years ago at Michaels.

Here’s the general idea of what I’m going for. I like that there are four styles of leaves, so they’re not all the same, and the size is good. But it doesn’t look authentic yet.

That’s where the leaf litter comes in. I also bought this from Green Stuff World, but based on some stuff I read online I think it’s made from the innards of birch tree seed pods, so if you have a birch tree handy you could make your own. They look just like little dead leaves.

I rolled some leaves around in red paint and dabbed off the excess with a paper towel.

Then I transferred them to a piece of wax paper and let them dry overnight.

I did another couple of batches with different colors of paint, and then mixed them in with the paper leaves.

That’s starting to look more realistic.

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