Throwback Thursday: Mom's Southwestern Porch

A couple of years ago, my mother sold her house and moved into an independent-living apartment in a continuing care community.  I had just bought a simple porch kit for a build-along project with my online half-scale group, and decided it would make a perfect housewarming gift for Mom.  Since she lives in Arizona and likes southwestern architecture, I went that route on the porch.

I used corrugated cardboard for my terracotta tile roof.  It worked pretty well.  I did freak out a little when I put the spackle/water mixture on the cardboard and it spread out almost flat, but as it dried, it sprang back into shape.  (Whew!)  It was a bit fussy, but I like the way it turned out. 

I used more spackle on the back wall (the exterior of the house) to give it some texture and a more adobe feel.  I also used that wonderful egg carton tile I had used in the greenhouse for the porch floor.  Then it was time to fill it with things that were special to my mom.

Some of the most important things are the pots you see along the bottom of the wall.

About five years ago, Mom was fixing up her kitchen, and we decided it would be fun to spruce up the soffit that ran along the top of the cabinets.  So we found some large stencils of southwestern pottery. (Mom said that these were the kind of pots she liked—the kind you don't have to dust!)

Here Mom is working on a couple of the stencils. 

And here I am.

Here is the finished product.

To make sure that Mom could take them with her, I sized pictures of the individual pots, printed them out on paper, cut them out and decoupaged them to the front wall of her porch.

For the shutters, Shellie of MiniEtchers was selling laser-cut shutters with a variety of different cut-out designs.  I e-mailed her to ask if she could do some shutters with cactus cut-outs. Not only did she send me the perfect shutters, she surprised me by putting the cactus design on a porch swing as well!

I printed the fabric for the cushion, as I was having difficulty finding a pattern I liked that would work in half scale.  And, in the picture below, you can see the infamous shamrock geranium leaves.  😊  (Hanging pots by Braxton-Payne.)

Mom loves hummingbirds.  I had a hummingbird feeder that I had received as part of a half-scale swap, but it had no hummingbird attached.  (Ultimately, it broke, and I was able to replace it with a Barbara Ann Meyer hummingbird feeder with an attached hummingbird that is about the size of a grain of rice.  I picked it up at the Good Sam Show.)

With no hummingbirds initially to add to her scene, I decided to stitch some on to pillows for the swing.  I hunted around on the Internet for the smallest hummingbird cross-stitch patterns I could find and worked them on 40-count Evenweave.

I also made a table for in front of the swing.  On it, I placed some of her favorite items—an ice cream sundae, a Starbucks drink (maybe a flat white?), and a good mystery. I made the Starbucks cup and book; the sundae is from Scale Designs.

I added some plants to the front.  The pots flanking the steps are from Braxton-Payne; the other large pots are actually 1:12 pottery from Michaels.  I thought they worked fine for large garden pots.

I made the cacti from polymer clay.  The Clivia is from SDK Miniatures.  The black-eyed Susans and purple flowers were made with my punches.

There are a few little animals gracing the scene.  A tiny jackrabbit from MiniGems hides behind a pot.  A sleeping tabby cat basks in the sun on the front steps. 

And a tiny lizard, also from Mini Gems, is running up one of the support columns. Mom loves lizards and had some painted metal lizards on the outside wall of her house, so I added a couple of colorful Peruvian ceramic bead geckos to the front wall.  Rounding out the porch are a mailbox, windchimes and welcome mat from the half-scale swap; a Kokopeli charm painted hand-rubbed bronze; a "metal" lawn chair from Shapeways; and a sign that says "Shirley's House."  I used the freezer-paper transfer technique to put the lettering on the sign.

I had intended the porch to be hung outside her door.  Most of the apartments there have bulletin boards, shelves, and other hanging objects outside the doors to personalize the space. To that end, everything is glued down very well, to discourage marauding fingers.  However, Mom was afraid that someone might carry it off, so it lives inside her apartment on a shelf-unit.  Besides, as Mom says, this way she can look at it every day.  😊

Hope you enjoyed this little tour.  Thanks for stopping by!