Getting ready for Christmas

It seems very early but I want to try and sell some Christmas wreaths so I went out this weekend to get some bits to decorate them with. Needless to say I got a little carried away! The wreaths on the white background are ones I put together this weekend - I just made one then changed the decorations. I'm going to promote them on facebook and at work so I wanted to have some photos ready for any potential customers to see. I've already got a few orders so I'm off to a good start!

The photo on the brown background is the wreath I had up at home last year, that I made on my evening course. That wreath was a lot bigger but also a lot heavier and more expensive to make.

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!

Floral arrangements

As part of my workshop redesign I have decided I want some big floral arrangements that can be a permanent feature in the room, made from artificial flowers. So I've been having a look for some inspiration. These images are all from Google image search and Pinterest, so all credit goes to the original sources.

Roses, peonies and tulips are my favourite types of flowers so I definitely want to incorporate all of these. I'm not very good with flower names so there are other flowers I really like in these photos but have no idea what they are!

I just need to build up a good stock of artificial flowers now before I can get started. I don't want ones that look really fake so I have been looking around. I often find garden centres have the best selections but they are a bit more pricey.

Sympathy: Week 6

Here are the results of week 6 of the sympathy unit of my floristry course. And I really don't like it! I liked it at the start but the more I added to it the worse I think it got. I just think it looks messy and I much prefer to work neatly. I do like the little hearts I managed to make with the tulip leaves though!

Sympathy: Week 4

This is the result of week 4 of my sympathy course, and I think my favourite design so far. This one was really simple to make, but it was quite tricky to get decent bark with everyone else on my course fighting for it! It looks more natural though when they don't all match perfectly.

I need to work on my pin work though - if you turn this upside down there are pins sticking out everywhere! Not ideal when a customer could pick it up and stab themselves! We'll be using pins again next week so I can keep it in mind and try and prevent them sticking out.

Sympathy: Week 1

My course at Writtle College started up again this week after the Christmas break, and this week we started the Sympathy unit. This one has the potential to be depressing but the course leader said she would try and use designs that don't look too funeral-y.

This design was quite easy to make but time consuming as there are a lot of flowers involved! Next week I'm going to try and take more step by step photos so you can see the progression, but I tend to just get caught up in what I'm doing and don't think about doing that!

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 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.