You might remember back in November when I was thinking about taking a flower arranging class, just for the fun of it. Well, I signed up for Nicole’s classes and this is what I’ve been doing the past two weeks.
Our first week we looked at prepping flowers correctly, the tools we need and how to create a hand-tied bouquet. I love hand-tied bouquets – it’s a more European way of arranging flowers and I love the tight arrangement of flowers. It does need a lot of practice though. I found it quite tough to keep holding on to the large amount of flowers while completing this – but I think the first try turned out quite nice (top left).
The second week we worked on an English Garden arrangement, something a little more flowey and natural. This was a little easier, but definitely challenging in making it look nice from all sides (top right).
A couple of things I learned these two weeks that have nothing to do with technique:
- My choices in flowers are very limited in January and the quality is often less than stellar. This is the reason I used roses both weeks.
- Flowers are expensive, even when you don’t have them arranged as a bouquet and are doing the work yourself
- Creating bouquets leaves you with a lot of flower waste – you are constantly trimming, thinning your flowers and are left with a big pile of greens you can’t use for anything.
It’s fun to be doing this – a change in my creative endeavours. It’s also wonderful to have nice flowers in my house each week – beyond the easy bunch of tulips thrown into a vase.
