My first paid work!

A girl at work saw my wreath design from last week and was so impressed that she asked me to make her one as well, which she paid me for. She said I could do pretty much anything I wanted but as I really enjoyed working with the dried fruit I decided to incorporate that into the design.

I have actually changed the wreath slightly since I took this photo, by adding another cluster of dried fruit and a pine cone at the top, between the cinnamon and under the chillies. I just thought it looked a little uneven and it was bothering me!

Candy Canes

I'm a little bit obsessed with candy canes - I don't actually like eating them but I just love the way they look! So I wanted to find some ways to incorporate them into my Christmas decorating. I had a look around the good old Internet and came up with a couple of ideas and here they are:

Candy cane vase

Candy cane wreath

Table centrepiece

My mum tasked me with designing a centrepiece for the table on Christmas day, and this is what I came up with:

It did take me quite a while but I'm so pleased with the overall result that it was definitely worth it!

Christmas decorating: part 3

I had some cinnamon sticks leftover from my christmas decorations so I had a go at making some candle holders, and I love how they turned out. They're really very simple - they're just glass tealight holders from Ikea, cinnamon sticks, a glue gun, some ribbon and a pearl bead. And then the candle of course!

I think they would have been slightly better with a straight edge tealight holder though as the sticks have a few gaps.

Christmas decorating: part 2

Some more of my christmas decorating now - this is the garland going up my staircase. This is made up of a plain green garland, an ivy garland, lights, pine cones, cinnamon sticks, a tiny owl and little bird houses. Simple materials but I think they all look very effective when all together.

Christmas decorating: part 1

My christmas tree! My family left me to it, they've learnt that the hard way, so this is all my handiwork. Well, except the lights - there's three sets on this tree so I got my mum to help. The tree is real and the decorations are strictly gold.

Floristry: Week 10

This is what I made in the tenth and final week of the first unit of my Floristry course. I'm so pleased with the final result! Although I am slightly annoyed that the design is off centre because it moved on the table before I added all the decorations.

Christmas Wreaths

In the final week of the 'Hand Tieds and Arrangements' unit of my course we are making a christmas wreath, and we have been given complete control over how we make and decorate them. So I've been looking for some ideas. All of these images are from a Google Image Search.

I've got a load of dried fruit, berries, pine cones and cinnamon sticks so I'm going to go for something quite natural. I really like the ones with little woodland creatures so I went to a garden centre to see what I could get. They didn't have any squirrels or owls but I got some really cute little mice instead which I hope will work. I also bought some ribbon and gold baubles to make it extra christmassy :)

Floristry: Week 9

I missed week 8 of my Floristry course because I was away in Edinburgh so I wasn't really prepared for week 9. We got a handout at the start which has a basic list of the materials we use and luckily I'd read it to know to bring in a vase! I would've been very stuck if I hadn't brought one!

We used very few flowers in this design but that doesn't  subtract from the overall look. Plus the colours and baubles make it look very festive!