First college assessment

I had my first assessment at college this week - and I got a distinction! We had 15 minutes to make the bouquet from start to finish but I was done in less than 10. The first photo is the cone wrap I made for the assessment. My tutor said it was "very commercial work showing excellent wrapping techniques, neat construction". Pretty good feedback I'd say!

The second photo shows what we made in the afternoon - a tied sheaf. This piece is for our portfolios.

Coggeshall Flower Festival

There's a bit of a delay in posting these photos because the festival was in August, but ahh well. The arrangements in this festival were very impressive, and I noticed how many more flowers I recognised the names of so that's good, must mean I'm learning something!

Birthday teacup

It was my friend Lauren's birthday recently and she asked me to make her a teacup arrangement - and here it is! Needless to say, Lauren was very happy with it! I think teacup arrangements are one of my favourite things to make.

College bouquets

We had a practical day at college today, and here are the two bouquets I made. We had to recycle the flowers which was a bit different, but much cheaper than having to buy two lots! We have a timed assessment on the first bouquet next week - eek! We have to make it from start to finish, including stripping the stems, wrapping and making the bow in 15 minutes. Looks like I'll be practicing a lot this week!

Autumnal

I was feeling inspired after going to the Tiptree Flower Club so I decided to make some autumnal designs of my own. I went foraging in the woods for most of the foliage, and I already had all the feathers. Sometimes my habit of picking stuff up because "one day it might come in useful" pays off!

Tiptree Flower Club

I went to the Tiptree Flower Club this week - I've been interested in going to a flower club for a while. I tried one out in another village a few months ago but it was on the same day as college so it wasn't really ideal. The Tiptree one was good fun though, the demonstrator was really good and the arrangements she made were amazing! Unfortunately I didn't win any of them in the raffle but I do think I will go to this one again.

Anniversary

Today is my brother and his wife's first wedding anniversary, and he asked me to make up a bouquet for her. They had lilac roses for their wedding but they're hard to get a hold of so I just kept with the purple colour scheme for this bouquet. I didn't want them to be the same as the ones I made last week so I got gypsophila and statice to make them a bit different.

I think I'm getting there with the photography too! Considering I got an A in my photography module at uni and have a decent camera you'd think I would be capable of taking a good photo, but apparently not! I played around with my camera though and the lighting is much better in these (I haven't edited them at all) I still need to find a decent backdrop though!