Coleonema pulchellum - Sunset Gold or Gold Breath of Heaven

I think I said that I bought two new plants today for my new endeavors into bonsaiing. The second one is a Coleonema Pulchellum, called either Sunset Gold or Gold Breath of Heaven. It's a non-native plant, coming to the US from New Zealand in the 1980s. It's a hardy plant with needle-like yellow-green foliage and small white or pink 5-petal flowers that bloom in the winter through the spring. The plant attracts bees, butterflies and birds, and is relatively drought tolerant. Most people grow these as low hedges, placing many plants fairly close together and letting them grow to a height of 2 - 3 feet and a width twice that.

I'm going to experiment with this hedge-type shrub as my experimental plant. I hope I can learn some of the tricks of the hobby without killing too many trees and shrubs!!

I'm starting slow, doing a pruning (branch removal) rather than  pinching back the new growth on the ends of the branches. That'll allow me to see the shape of the trunk and the distribution of the limbs with little or no risk of killing the shrub. Deb bought me a pair of Bonsai trimming scissors at Hidai Japanese Gardening store across the street from REI on San Pablo. Using them, I trimmed and cut and snipped and plucked until much of the undergrowth was gone and only the top knot (see "bad hair day" before picture) was left. Here's a pic of the shrub soon after the haircut. 

I'm going to let the plant rest for a while. I think I could get carried away in the pruning, and I don't want to harm the plant. In addition, I don't want to prune it so far that it looks terrible nd takes a long time to recover.