Christmas is in the air! It's made me dig out one of my jugs decorated with poinsettias. I`ve filled it with white flowers (so soothing and a lovely contrast to all the bling coming our way).
The pine cones and dried peppers around this jug are pointing the way to the materials needed for wreath-making. I will be running my wreath workshop next Saturday. The wreaths can be hung inside or outside and will look something like this:
I think this is the last year I will run this kind of wreath workshop. I might experiment with other approaches in future years. Here is an example of one I made a few years ago. Instead of wire and straw as the base, I used branches from our cotoneaster tree woven together. Then I added dried materials. Jessie said it looked a bit Mrs Haversham-ish - hmm, she had a point!
Over the years I have run several Christmas flowers workshops and I've picked out a couple of the more interesting ones. For this first one we used dried materials to make a container and then we added gorgeous dark red roses, berries and foliage.
This second idea was inspired by Francois Weekes' woodland arrangements concept. All the materials were attached to a piece of wood through the medium of moss. We made a little moss-covered container for a few fresh flowers.
After all the work preparing and running workshops, when it comes to my own Christmas flowers I prefer just placing my flowers in jugs - I especially like pewter, ivy designs and vintage with a bit of gold in the design:
A couple of years ago I left everything too late and I just couldn`t bring myself to buy the glittered, glitzy, nearly dead red flowers in the supermarket. Instead I bought a couple of bunches of flowers in vibrant, mixed colours. I was pretty pleased with the arrangements I got out of them.
This weekend I will be in Filey where the fishtive Christmas tree will be turned on. This is a tree shape made out of lobster pots by Filey's few remaining fishermen. It's a tradition in Filey and it's brilliant.
A very happy Christmas to you all.
