Crafty Me

I had volunteered to make one arrangement and had been volunteered to make another. The deadline looms so I'd better get busy.

These are the items needed for the first arrangement. The hardest part of the project is figuring out the look you are going for. Here I knew that I wanted an arrangement without flowers, but struggled to find an appropriate container. Finally I wandered down the basket aisle of the craft store and found this small wooden chest. I now had a plan.

Also needed are a hot glue gun, needle nose pliers, wire cutters (not shown), a craft knife (not shown), scissors and heavy wire.

The "ingredients" for the arrangement are floral foam, sheet moss, silk ivy, a silk artichoke, plastic grapes, pheasant feathers, curly willow twigs and the box.

A word about the floral foam. There are several different kinds available and each has a specific purpose. Make sure you pick the correct foam for the project.

The first step was to cut the floral foam and glue it to the bottom of the box. Floral foam is hard on knives, so don't use your good knife for this purpose.

I then put down the sheet moss. Years ago I learned the hard way to not glue the moss in place. The glue would prevent the stems from being poked through and the stems will end up holding the moss in place.

And here is a handy tip for dealing with pliers or wire cutters that don't have a spring handle. If you hold the tool like so, your hand becomes the spring. This keeps you from having to constantly keep changing your hold on the tool.


See how this works?

Since the grapes don't have a sturdy stem, I cut a length of wire and looped one end to the grapes. Now they can be stuck into the foam.

Another length of wire is glued and stuck into the bottom of the artichoke.

And the dry fit is complete. Now, I just have to take everything out and glue them into place. Wish me luck.

Not bad. Not bad at all. I think the lady who will be receiving this arrangement will be pleased.

And on to the next arrangement.

I had promised to make an arrangement for a charity raffle. Might as well take care of that one too.

The event is a Ladies' Tea, so what better vessel for the arrangement than a tea pot?

I wanted this arrangement to look like a summer bouquet, so I chose the flowers accordingly. Again, the most time consuming part of the entire project was in choosing the materials. In fact, I'm fairly sure that I was wandering around the store, picking up flowers, putting them back and muttering to myself the entire time before moving on to the next flowers.

The roses are the predominant form in the arrangement, so they were placed in the pot first. I never just take the floral bush as is and plop it in the pot. Each stem was cut from the bunch and placed individually in the arrangement.

The green/white flowers are the next largest and were cut from the stem before being placed around the edge of the pot.

Finally, the small wildflower stems were cut apart from the large bunch and added to the pot. The arrangement must frequently be turned so that a balanced look is achieved. I usually use an old kitchen turntable for just this purpose, but today I just turned the pot by hand.

And another arrangement is finished.

I'm pleased with how this turned out.

All told, both projects took me just over an hour to complete.

My first job was as a silk and dried floral arranger. I had the task of taking an arrangement or wreath that a designer had created and to make X number of copies of that item. From time to time, we were given the task of creating our own arrangements as a teaching tool. I vividly remember staring at the vase for my first arrangement, absolutely terrified of having to create an arrangement that would be seen from all sides. Fortunately, practice does make perfect, and I am much more confident in my ability to create these arrangements.

Not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon.