and a certain amount of practical knowledge are needed, and we would advise everyone in taking it up to study and copy directly from nature, thereby producing good work, which will not be merely imitative, but artistic. Fig. 26 shows a receptacle for flowers in the shape of a log made of pottery and ornamented with pansies modelled in gutta percha. The separate parts of the flowers
Fig. 26.
and a leaf are shown in Fig. 27. Cut out for each pansy two back petals (at the upper right hand corner in Fig. 27), two side ones (the middle one in the cut), and one like that in the lower right hand corner.
Make the edges irregular and somewhat crinkled as in nature. Take great pains to curve and model each petal correctly. Press the lower petal with a large pin or the bone paper knife on the right side at the base, so as to hollow it slightly. In modelling the petals, it will often be found better to heat the tool you use, than the petal itself, as there will not be so much danger of pulling it out of shape. Some prefer to tint the separate parts of the flower before making up. If you do so, you
