Halloween

It’s all orange, red, yellow and black at the moment. We are surrounded by autumnal leaves, witches hats, pumpkins and fireworks. I wanted to capture something of this for my Halloween workshop last week. So I painted these jam jars. The Cornish flowers we used were alstroemeria in red and orange, yellow narcissi, yellow and red snapdragons and exquisite red kaffir lilies. We also had three different sorts of Cornish foliage to work with and I added in a few orange roses and bright orange asclepias (the fluffy orange flowers you can see below) from Sheffield flower market. Here are the flowers ready to go:

And here are the jugs and jam jars we used.

The main arrangement was a large bouquet presented in an autumnal Heron Cross jug. Here it is on the night of the workshop, and again in the daylight.

I can`t resist including this picture of one of the workshop participants – I love the way she is smiling whilst surrounded with so many flowers.

As an alternative to the Halloween painted jam jars, I decorated some with pretty vintage paper depicting all sorts of pumpkins, gourds and squashes - a more muted look than the bright orange jars.

Then, having used the alternative jam jars for flowers, I put candles in the Halloween jam jars and placed them in our porch to welcome our ‘trick or treat’ visitors who came to our door on 31^st October.

My next flower workshop is on Saturday 22 November when we will be making arrangements in vintage containers. Here is a taster of the kind of thing we will make in cups and saucers and sundae dishes: