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hi everyone nigel saunders here it has been 21 days since i ordered those miniature chinese houses from china and today they came in i've heard all kinds of horror stories about ordering stuff online what you see in the picture sometimes isn't what you get so i was keeping my fingers crossed hoping these buildings look good so let's have a look at them today i'm not a fan of unboxing videos so i already opened up all the boxes but i haven't taken the plastic wrapping off the buildings yet so i've kind of seen them but not quite so here they are i'll take away the styrofoam here and here and here's the building so i'll turn them around and i've never taken the plastic off yet so let's do that there's another little bag here that comes with some little ornamental dragons in it and i think they go in like the courtyard or somewhere um yeah so we'll open this up there we are there's the smaller one and then here's the larger building there it is and there's my little bag of dragons and there's some i'm not sure if those are stickers in there i'll have to open them up but here's the buildings let's have a close-up look at them here's a look at the buildings now and i'm very pleased with them they're very detailed very accurate they look just like they do in the photographs so i'm kind of relieved there and i i think they're going to be really nice in this cityscape diorama these buildings are sold as planters so in each building there's a cavity here that you can plant a plant and there's a hole right through the bottom so it lets water drain out which is kind of nice here's the opening in the smaller one it too has a hole in the bottom for drainage they're made of a quite a tough plastic i don't know what kind of plastic it is but it's very rigid almost like um styrene plastic almost yeah and they should be able to stand up to you know outside in the weather and everything now there is they are electronic i'll show you that in the back i'll rotate them around to the back now so back here you can see there's a little door on the back of each one and that's to put batteries and there's a switch at the back too so i'll open that up so it looks like two aa batteries so i'll see if i can find some all right i'm back with triple a batteries i was wrong they're not double a's so here goes the first one in like that and number two goes in like that close my little door up turn it on okay so let's rotate back around here here's a view from the front with the lights on now it's daytime i'll turn any lights i have on here off and i don't know if you can see anything it does light up a little bit and i'm not sure how it's supposed to light up um there's no real windows in the front but you can see the glow in the courtyard there i've got the second one lit up now and i can't see much in the daytime here but i'll come back at night time and i'll show you what they look like lit up at night i'm going to open up the little packages now show you what's inside those so here they are they're little little dragons there's one there another one there and then the other package not sure it has something a little extra let's have a look in there it's a sticker and it has i assume chinese writing on it there there so there's another dragon and another one here so there they are yeah so i i don't know if this is chinese or mandarin but maybe a viewer can tell me i don't know there it is i don't know if you can see that well enough but it's pretty small so there's the one and then the other one is here yeah so that's that's it i must look like a giant looking at these buildings here uh the next step i think is to try them out in the pot and you know arrange them around a bit and see if we can come up with some kind of a composition here's a look at the trees now they're all alive and doing well and healthy there's a lot of new shoots growing in i'll show you those here's a look at a growing tip i pruned it off here and i've got one two three four four sprouts on the tip and there's another one coming off here and one here so it's starting to branch out all over so yeah they're doing really well i'll remove all the trees from the pot and then we can put the buildings in and see how they fit the two buildings are a different scale this one's a larger scale than this one so this one will have to be in the background and this one in the foreground to give that sense of forced perspective i've got some wooden blocks that i can place them on just to raise them up to kind of the surface level of the pot so they're not sunk in that'll give us a good idea when i'm arranging them you know what they'll look like so i'll put the block under here so yeah now i've got to kind of arrange them and i'll add some trees here's a possible arrangement i've got a lot of trees behind the big building and i think that looks nice it's kind of like a backdrop a jungle kind of backdrop to it that could look quite good i do i like kind of the alleyway running between the two buildings but i'm thinking what if i turn the big building on its side so we're looking at the the end of it over here so it kind of opens it up so it invites you into the middle of the planting right now it's kind of you're looking square on one building and a square on another and there's no you know other than that little alleyway between the two buildings there's nothing that invites into the scene so i'm going to try turning the big building 90 degrees and see what that looks like i've turned the main building 90 degrees and i don't like it at all you kind of see that wall wall of the building here and uh it doesn't look yeah it doesn't invite you in the best features of the building are kind of hidden um definitely can't do that there's a view of the main building here on an angle now i don't like that either i think because the pot is rectangular and the buildings are rectangular i i think i've got to go with that kind of rectangular layout like i began with with the you know the main building face on at the front and the other one towards the back so yeah i think that initial layout was closer closer to something i like i've got it kind of close to where i began there um i've opened it up a bit so the houses are a little more separated and the main building is closer to the edge of the pot and i don't really like that i think it's i think it needs to be in from the edge of the pot and also not so far forward i think it has to be that larger house has to be on the middle ground in the middle of the pot and then the smaller one towards the back so there's a bit of space out front so it's not just buildings in your face i think yeah i think it needs a little greenery around the buildings and maybe some trees in front just uh yeah give it more of a i don't know a landscape feel to it so i'll try that i've rearranged it now so i've got the larger buildings more towards the middle of the pot i've got trees kind of surrounding it um and the smaller houses towards the back so let me drop down and we'll have a look at it from kind of eye level here's a look more at eye level and yeah i'm kind of liking this i like the fact that the buildings are surrounded by trees it gives it a real natural and peaceful setting there's something about having trees and shade around your houses that just looks pleasing and these trees will just keep getting better in the future as i work on them so that's a distinct possibility is something like this having this kind of an arrangement i still have lots of room up front for using all my little cobbles and that that i have from those kits i don't think i would be building any more buildings i think i would save that for you know maybe just building a wall or part of a building and then have one tree growing over it sort of a ruins type uh pensing so yeah i think this one you know maybe a courtyard with moss in the middle here or a little green area uh trees i i think it's going to look quite nice i'm just trying to think you know is there a better arrangement than this and i don't think there's much of a better arrangement because i'm forced to have the big tree the big house out front the little one at the back uh because the pot is very angular rectangular i can't really put anything on an angle it starts to look funny it doesn't match the pot i don't want the houses overlapping each other or anything i don't want the houses too close to the edge of the pot because you can remember that even though they're buildings you still want that sort of asymmetry in the planting so the bigger buildings here the smaller ones over here kind of almost creates an asymmetrical triangle uh yeah i don't want the houses any closer to the edge of the pot yeah i think something like this is going to be it i think and i i think it looks great i think it'll look really nice when it's all done it's hard to to imagine it you know right now all the trees are in pots and yeah it looks quite different than what it they'll look like when they're planted so let's just fly in and have a look anyway so there would be the main building there's room on this side for a tree or two i thought maybe a tree kind of shadowing the courtyard there something like that a tree growing out of the roof there that ancient ruins um i may plant a tree right beside this this flat wall on the building right here you know i have a tree growing up beside that to kind of break up that flat area so it's a little more interesting i can't fit a pot in there right now yeah and maybe you know these trees arrange differently so there is that nice green area in the middle something that invites you in and a place you'd like to be yeah i think it's going to look quite nice and this project i mean it could have gone any direction and all would have been i think fantastic but this is the direction i went with and i'm kind of glad i did because if i built all the buildings from scratch it would take my whole winter up and uh i wouldn't be able to work on the rest of my trees i think it would have been too time consuming so you kind of have to be realistic like do you have the time to build all these miniature scale buildings and you know do you want to spend that much time bit making them you know i would enjoy that time making them but i know i don't have that kind of time to be doing that there's kind of a top down view here's a shot of the building at night so you can see it's just kind of a general glow it depends on the paint thickness on the building so i think i can open that up i can uh you know paint it on the inside so it's more of a solid color and maybe open up some windows there's the courtyard down there yeah make some windows or something so it brings some light out the front so it looks a little more realistic rather than just kind of a glowing building i mean it's a cool effect but uh the one building glows quite brightly but the other one which you can see behind there it's not as bright it's more dim so that could definitely have some windows opened up in it and that would look much much better at night because it's kind of nice having them lit up at night and i think the trees will look really nice with some lights around them it'll look very uh ah just cool at night and maybe i can add some little led lights you know make it even more realistic looking if i wanted to make this look more like a a city rather than one that's being swallowed up by nature i could wrap little led lights around the trunks of the trees lighting them up so all the branches are wrapped so it create a really nice night scene that would look quite realistic i think i've seen a lot of trees where they do that they write wrap lights around the trunk and branches and at night you get this tree lit up so that's another possibility i don't know if i'd want to go that far i think more of a natural look would be better but you know it's a possibility i've got my cityscape on the bench over there i'll look at it tonight and think about it and tomorrow i'll start working on it i also got another present in the mail today and i'll show you that i also got a box from stefan he lives in germany and he sent me some 3d printed bonsai pots that he's making and he hopes to make a business out of it eventually he's not set up for retail sales or anything yet but he's designing making pots and experimenting and then eventually he's hoping maybe mid-summer he'll get into the retail side of it so he sent me some example pots so i'm really excited to see what they look like i haven't looked at them yet i did open the box up and he sent me some really cool stickers so he obviously watches the bonsai zone because there's the first one cycling something i like to do canadian peace we all wish for world peace mountain biking it's another thing i like to do and real men use three pedals he obviously knows i like driving manual transmissions so that's cool i think that'll go on the truck maybe or maybe even one of the cars so that's really cool i like those stickers i'm going to use them all so he sent me a nice letter and let's get out the pots so i haven't opened them up yet i took them out of the box just uh so i'm not digging through packing peanuts and things like that so let's get them opened up and they're they're nice and lightweight so and 3d printed pots you know i really like them i think it it's another tool you can use um i know clay pots are traditional and but you know it's it's like do you like paintings or pencil drawings it's it does the same function it's just two different mediums and i i really like 3d printer pot oh wow look at that now that that is a beautiful pot wow if that was in a bone size show i don't think there's a single person that could ever tell that was wasn't made of clay i mean that's just fantastic it's just beautiful that is really nicely done wow and it's light it won't break amazing so this is made out of a really tough pla plastic uh stefan said that it goes up it's good up to 80 degrees celsius which that's pretty hot i mean that's twice as hot as it'll ever get in my greenhouse so we'll definitely give the pots a good torture test see how they do but wow these are printed really nicely i am just so amazed that is just awesome that's a real treasure i like that and you know to think stefan designed this 3d printed it painted it all up and it just looks beautiful so that's one of them let's uh let's continue here we'll we'll take a closer look at them in the end there so here's another one obviously a different style it's a little more shallow i better get my scissors i've got my curved scissors the ones that were pruning moss yesterday today they're opening packages all right whoa look at this one is that ever cool so check that out it's like metallic again just beautifully done wow there's the feet on the bottom so stefan mentioned these would be good for you know maybe a jade or something where you need the roots growing out to the edges of the pot so they can't tip over easily if you have a pot that has tapered sides the tree can tip over in the pot a little more unless it's wired in place but you know you don't generally want to wire succulents in a pot so that is really nice i like that beautiful style amazing okay let's get out the next pot so this is the third and last pot but there is another little surprise in there let's have a look at this one check that out it's got metallic metallic on it and beautiful weathered and or you know a pattern on it kind of a goldish iridescent top on it beautifully molded feet on the bottom that is just wonderful again it's got a nice lip if you want to grow a succulent in here fantastic just fantastic and light it's beautiful yeah i really like those pots they're fantastic i'll show them all together in the end so let's look at the last item he sent me so this this is a model of buddha and he uh he created the 3d model from a larger one he had and he took a series of photographs of the model and then there's programs that take those photographs and they turn them into a 3d model like a wireframe model and then you can take that model and scale it up or down and print it so that's how this was created so let's have a look at it whoa is that ever cool have a look at that i don't know if that's in focus but we'll look at it later that is really detailed and really nice wow that would look great under my ficus religiosa definitely i think that's where it's going the packaging in this box from stefan uses these starch-based noodles they're biodegradable so that's fantastic i'm glad to see that that's that's great here's a look at the largest pot up close it's really beautiful it's hard to believe that's 3d printed there's the bottom of the pot very precise feet which i really like in a miniature pot i uh it's one thing where the small pots often fall short is it's hard to make really precision miniature looking feet on the bottom of the pot usually they look kind of large and clumsy looking and 3d printing allows you to get those precision feet and i really like that in 3d printing you can also 3d print in metal there's clay impregnated plastics there's wood impregnated plastics so i think the technology for 3d printing will just continue to rise and yeah i think it's fantastic i mean this pot was designed by stuff and and now here it is in reality so that's cool i think it's a it's an art form that's going to emerge in the future here's a shot of one of the other pots and this pot is really cool because it has like a coppery metallic finish and then the green on it and yeah it's just beautiful really nice again very precision feed on the bottom of the pot and also the lips everything's everything's really precision which i really like in these smaller pots i've got the last pot sitting on a stand that jonathan gave me and so i think stefan's pot maybe this isn't the ideal stand for it but again this is a really nice pot it's kind of a dark force metallic green and yeah that that's really cool i think that's a beautiful looking pot just wonderful here's a look at the buddhist statue and i think you know scanning technology creating 3d models from photographs and that is just going to become more mainstream in the future even our library has a 3d laser scanner so i could scan this reproduce it make changes in the model and then print it out again so yeah it's really cool it's amazing the amount of detail you can get in some of these 3d models there's a close-up of the buddhist statue now so you can see all the detail up close looks really fantastic here's a 3d pot that i made last year i designed the pot printed it out and i painted this sort of crackle glaze finish on it i really had fun painting it up and i i think it looks really good i this is one of my favorite little pots i'm going to put a rock planting in it someday when i find the right rock with maybe some sand around it just as a there'll be no living tree in it just maybe a bit of moss the rock and sand once you have the 3d model made you can print it out any scale so here's the same table a smaller version and a large one underneath thanks very much stefan for these 3d printed pots and the buddha and the stickers it's a wonderful gift and i think they're just works of art i think they're fantastic later on i'll be doing another episode where i'll be planting these pots and i'll add the link to stefan's website and show examples of some of the other pots he's designed and 3d printed so look for that coming up in the future i've got one more piece of mail that i got today i the mailbox was just stuff full of stuff for me so it was my lucky day today so i'll show you that in stefan's letter he said i hope you find the secret of the buddha and i thought oh he must mean like maybe i'll come across some revelation or something or and then i was picking the buddha up and i noticed i thought wait a minute this the base of it here it just kind of wiggled a bit or something and i thought oh is that coming on glued and then i i i kind of thought oh it's two pieces so i opened it up there it is and inside is a little note here it is there's three ball bearings in here i think that's to weigh it down and in the note it says you found the secret chamber may the flow be with you so i found the secret message inside the buddha isn't that cool i'm going to put it back in maybe someone else will find that in the future put buddha back on covering this secret back up thanks stefan i did find the secret of the buddha the last gift is from tom he has a youtube channel called growing clip bonsai for seniors it's a really good channel and he's a really nice guy so check it out i'll put the link to his channel in the description below tom always sends me really cool things he sent me those rabbits he sent me these ducks in this pagoda today he sent me some foil blankets when you're using a grow light like the one i have in the background there the light that spills out and hits that back wall it's absorbed by the wall because it's a dark black color it's better to put something that reflects the light back to the plants and it increases the amount of light that they eventually get so tom sent me some foil blankets which are really highly reflective mylar i'll show you those so here they are they're emergency blankets and they're a really shiny foil i'll open one up here so there you can see it's almost like chrome they're so reflective so that can be hung on the back behind your grow light and it'll reflect a lot of light back to the plant so they're very useful and they're very lightweight you can hang them anywhere i'm not going to fold it out because i think it'll eventually become a big sheet so thanks very much tom that's wonderful i'll hang those up and put them to good use i don't have any links to any of the products that i showed on today's video i'm not trying to sell anything i'm just showing you what i got i'm sure you can find something very similar or the exact same thing online and that's all for today i'm nigel saunders thanks for joining me in the bonsai zone