{Hello!: A Year Of Doors} May... Part 2

May is now completed!

The scale gravel I had ordered did arrive yesterday, so I was able to do the landscaping/ground for it yesterday afternoon/evening.  Of course, like the others, it's not permanently installed yet because I'm still not 100% on the finish for the display (pretty sure I'm going to stick with the color it is right now, but I'm still debating whether I want to spray a matte top coat over it to take the gloss down a bit, or leave it full gloss...). I am really happy with how the whole thing turned out, I think it's my favorite one so far! It does not have a doormat though even though that was something that I had planned for every door to have because I really love the stepping stones and don't want to cover them up any with a doormat (plus I'm not really sure how well a doormat on that sort of path would work in real life anyway). So, we're just going to say the stepping stones are the doormat and go with that haha.

So, without further ado here is the making of part 2:

While I was waiting for the scale gravel to be delivered I tried a couple different things for the ground cover for the non gravel areas.  I wanted it to be an actual groundcover plant rather than just grass, but also didn't want something too overly detailed or time consuming.  I thought this green large grain sand would work nicely, but of course it is too shiny on its own, so I tried putting matte Mod Podge over part of it, just spraying it with matte top coat on another part and then dabbing on some green craft paint on another and it was clearly the green craft paint section that looked the best, so that's what I went with

I applied a bed of glue to the gravel areas and sprinkled the gravel on and then made the stepping stones from clay that I mixed a couple colors together, leaving it just shy of completely mixed to give it some color variation, and baked them before starting work on the path.

I did weigh them down while the glue was drying so that they were more set into the gravel not just floating on top (this is a set of metal stamps so it has some good weight to it, but has a completely flat bottom and isn't too big.... I'm going to have to remember to use it again in the future when I need stuff weighed down this time it just happened to still be sitting on my workbench when I was looking for something to use).  I did end up doing a little bit of a second layer of glue and gravel around the stepping stones in a couple places and in a couple other places where it was a little bare

Here is the finished path and gravel areas test fitted with the wall and the bench to make sure the edges were correct and everything

And here is a close up of the path finished

And a close up of the ground cover finished

With those done I glued the bench in place and then the wellies

And then realized there was one other thing I still had to add.... Can you spot it?

It's this door's "hello", on a garden stake this time.

And just for good measure, since the rest of the ground elements got closeups, here is a closeup of the house number flower pots as well.  Of, course, as with all the other months, the house number is the month's number and the year.

Also, I realized that I should have included this in my last post along with the doorknobs/handles, but I did figure out a way to add the "'hello" to April's door!:

I actually had originally made this copper stamped "hello" for May before I did the "chalkboard" one, but it was just a little too big for a garden stake where I was putting it, and I happened to lay it down near the display and see it and April all in one glance and thought perhaps it would work with that scene.  I had already decided that if I was going to add a "hello" it was probably going to somehow be on the trim above the door, since that's where I was originally going to put the house numbers before deciding to do the oversized number down beside the door, and this little copper sign fit just perfectly there, and I liked how it looked with the scene as a whole.... as I said, since this door was completed before I decided on the "hello" challenge, I wasn't going to add it just for the sake of having it, I was only going to do it if it blended smoothly with the rest, as if it had always been art of the plan, and I think this fit that bill.

I still don't have the light blue cardstock for the siding for January's door (which if it ends up looking like it's going to be too much longer before I can easily shop in store at Hobby Lobby I might try just using white cardstock and painting it light blue, but I'm not sure how well painting the cardstock will turn out), but I'm going to try to get as much of everything else done for that one in the meantime so that when I finally get it all I will have to do will be to do the siding and glue everything on. Other than that I think I'm probably done with the doors until whenever in June I do June's door (unless I decide to go ahead and do December's, but at this point I'll probably wait on that a little while at least).  With the doors caught up (or at least soon to be caught up) it will free up time and workbench space for me to get back to work on the last 2 Whimsy Street shops, "The Librarian And The Bookworm Used Books", and "JellyBean's Ice Cream and Delights".