FLORA MORNINGS: PART 4

My wish for there to be roses this week came true! 

And such beautiful roses they are. I could honestly stare at them all day...

We were really spoilt for choice this week with our flowers, as we even had lisianthus! They are one of my favourite flowers and are quite commonly found in wedding bouquets. The little purple chrysanthemums were so cute and vibrant with their bright green centres.

These sea hollies were so unique! 

I loved how well they complimented the bright green chrysanthemums. 

Look at the selection of flowers we had this week! So dreamy... We had so many types of flowers I didn't even use all of them up. So I brought the leftovers home to play around with. In this photo you can see that we had some tetragona nuts which look like the eucalyptus gum nuts I used a few weeks back. The big shiny green leaves are camelias.

So on to the first arrangement - a wreath! SO excited about this arrangement as I've always wanted to learn how to make a wreath. Instead of making a hanging wreath, we made a table centrepiece. The flowers were placed at a lower height, so as not to block the flow of conversation. Below you will see floral foam in the shape of a wreath. We placed the flowers in the foam on an angle, flowing in the same direction to ensure continuity. 

The foliage I used to create the base of the wreath were the tegragona nuts, which did a perfect job of hiding most of the floral foam. After I placed the base foliage, I started placing the flowers. I decided to go with small clusters of 3 different flowers - one rose, one chrysanthemum and one sea holly. I then used the camelias to hide all the exposed floral foam, which also did a good job of bringing the whole wreath together by making it look more dense and uniform. As we had such a large range of flowers to play around with this week, it was interesting to see everyone else's arrangements as you could clearly see all the different styles. I wish I could've taken photos of all the arrangements!

A close up of the wreath...

We also made Pomanders. To create a Pomander, we used a small floral foam ball. This arrangement was really difficult to handle as you had to constantly hold the ball in one hand by the wire or risk squashing all the flowers on one side. You then had only one hand to cut and prepare all the flowers (usually a two handed task). Single-handed floristry is what I call it... I'm pretty sure I will have a sore arm again! For this arrangement I used the lisianthus, purple & bright green chrysanthemums, ivy and spray roses. 

A close up... 

Bottom view of the Pomander.

I have to say this was one of my favourite classes as we made such unique arrangements and had such an amazing range of flowers. I only hope next week is just as good! Yes, it will be the last class... I am so sad thinking about it but all good things must come to an end! I plan on purchasing some books by Constance Spry for some floral inspiration! More on that in another post......