One of the few remaining items from my earlier dollhouse days is a book on making miniature plants out of florist tape called Miniature House Plants by Ruth Hanke.  I made an elephant ear plant from a DVD called Master Miniaturists: Flowers & Plants.  It has a similar approach.

There are a ton of house plants in this 1988 book, and I know I've made at least one of them before.  This time around, I opted for the snake plant.

click image to enlarge

Here's a real life one for example.

image from firehow.com

For the dirt, I glued in a piece of styrofoam into a ceramic pot.  I then covered the surface with tacky glue and sprinkled on earl grey tea.  It has a nice peat moss quality.

In the book example, while the author did include painting the rough stripes of the plant, she didn't include the wide light green outer edges so I added those based on the real deal.  :D  I then sealed the leaves with Delta Ceramcoat Satin Varnish.

I poked holes in the styrofoam base, clipped the long wires and glued each leaf in place.  The plant stand is a McQueenie Miniatures kit I made previously.

I rather like how this plant turned out.  :D  I think I'll be making a few more examples from this book.

Note: for those of you who work in half scale, this book includes both 1" and 1/2" scale patterns.  :D