Holiday Wreaths '11

Last year, I posted a how-to on wreathmaking. I know for a fact that at least two people read that post, because this year my mom and my sister asked me for help making their own wreaths.  So the Tuesday before Thanksgiving we got together for a little craft party.

I bought all the goods from Michael's crafts, with these requests: My sister wanted to do something unconventional, with non traditional holiday colors. My mom wanted a boxwood wreath (using boxwood cuttings from her garden).  I wasn't sure what I was going to make.

I saw the above for sale at Michael's and liked the idea of it; I decided to use that as a guide, only I'd scale back the....bling.  I bought fake lemons for my mom and pink and blue Christmas balls for my sister. And I bought wine.  Beaujolais Nouveau in fact. (For the record, the food was tasty too - whole wheat pasta in a butternut squash sauce with toasted walnuts and a salad of shaved Brussel sprouts with pecorino and toasted walnuts).

Above, mom gets started with wire, boxwood and wreath frame.

While Tina starts plotting out placement of ornaments on her foam wreath, using toothpicks to do preliminary placement.

Meanwhile, I took a grapevine wreath and painted it with silver shimmer spraypaint.

Tina's progressed beautifully, though I underestimated how many ornaments we'd need.

Mom's placing an "H" ornament of silver bells on the wreath.

Tina's finished wreath is above - it's Katy Perry's dream wreath, candy colored and fun.

Mom's is above -- very traditional, though I like the off center placement of the bow wrapped around cinnamon sticks.

And mine, above.  It really doesn't photograph well, but not counting drying time for paint, it took about ten minutes to make.

It's simply a grapevine wreath, with silver and red "berries" wired into it.  I would have added more gilt perhaps, but in person it's quite nice.

Bouquets

So, things have been busy this summer for me.  Work has been moving at a rapid clip and on top of this, my sister got married last Saturday!  It was a wonderful event and I love her and her new husband dearly.  And obviously, we worked together on the flowers. 

We used orchids for the centerpieces at the tables and I'll post photos of those later this week.  For now, I'll show you how to make a bouquet, in case you don't already know.  I blogged about a year and a half ago about my experiences working at a florist.  When I was there, I also learned how to make fairly simple bouquets for weddings.

My sister loves hydrangeas, so we did blue hydrangeas with white roses for her.  We did photos before the ceremony on a July afternoon so I actually made her two bouquets, one for the photos and a fresh one for the ceremony. The bridesmaids were all wearing different colors of the same dress, so we kept our bouquets simple -- white roses.

I got the flowers at a wholesaler called Potomac Floral Wholesale.  Since my business is related, I was able to get a wholesale account, though they are strict about who can and can't work with them.  It was a blast walking through their warehouse, seeing the endless amounts of flowers.

 

The roses were longstemmed white roses called 'Eskimo' - the color was gorgeous, with just a touch of green.  Roses are delivered packed as you see them above - 25 to a bunch.  Typically they are grown in Columbia.  In fact, rose shipments are regularly searched as they've been used to mule cocaine into the country by drug traffickers in the past.

You need a few different tools to really take best care of the flowers.  Clippers to cut the stems (the orange ones above are Felcos, which are the best).  You don't want to use scissors unless they're terribly sharp because you don't want the stems to be crushed at all, instead they should be sliced cleanly so water transfer isn't interrupted.  You can use scissors to clip the leaves off.

 

 Finally, you use a knife to slice off the thorns.  Luckily this cultivar had very few thorns, so this didn't take long.  Once you've recut the bottoms of the stems, removed the leaves and cut the thorns off, you remove the outer, bruised petals and finally, put the roses right back into the water.

 

We planned on doing 15 roses per bouquet, so next you begin to organize the roses, trying to make them into an attractive bunch.  When you like how they look, you put rubber bands around the stems, holding them together. 

 When that's done, we wrapped the bunch in floral glue, which you can pick up at a craft store.  It's double sided with adhesive.  Once the glue is wrapped around the bouquet, you wrap ribbon around the base and use corsage pins to anchor the ribbon. 

 

Photos of the bride's bouquet and more tomorrow or Wednesday!

Palm Decor

I couldn't have spent so much time lately blogging about palms, without including these shots of a shelter at Waimea Valley Botanical Garden.
 

Massive palm fronds (my guess is from the classic Cocos nucifera or coconut) were used to wrap the posts of this lovely but simple shelter.

It's hard not to look at this and begin fantasizing about my future home in one of the more remote corners of Oahu or the Big Island. Such a nice way to decorate and bring the palms inside.  

Decorating...

Last summer, I was teaching Abies concolor (white fir) to my students.  I was extolling the plant's virtues, in comparison to Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens glauca), noting on how much softer the needles were and encouraging the students to smell the lemony scent on their own.  As I was wrapping up this introduction, I mentioned, "You can even make wreaths or boughs with its branches during the holidays."

My students stared at me curiously, mouths agape, and I actually processed what had just come out of my mouth.

"Wow," I laughed, "That was a real Martha Stewart moment."

I'm not a particularly crafty type -- despite years making holiday decorations like wreaths and topiaries at various plant nurseries, or my repeated Valentine's Days spent working at a florist.  I appreciate the skill and talent involved, but who has the time?

This year however, I planted about 30 boxwood (Buxus microphylla and B. sempervirens) at my folks' place in Virginia, and they all needed pruning.  It seemed like a waste not to make something out of the clipped branches.   

This wreath (and one other one) was made in a fevered bout of ambition -- I had the clippings and dammit if I wasn't going to finish this project, stat.  So as I sat on the living room floor of my parents' house, with the clipped branches spread out on an old bedsheet and bad '80's movies on TV (Shelley Long, anyone?), I furiously wired bundles of boxwood to a frame and I failed to take a single photo of the process.  If you're interested in making your own, Cottage and Vine has a great post with pics of the process and materials needed.

I used some old pear ornaments and hot-glued them to the wreath to add some interest, but you could also use small lemons.  I prefer the simplicity of a wreath like this one, and my folks' house has some Williamsburg-ish vocabulary in the architecture which called for something understated and classic.

Later that weekend, when my fingertips were still a little raw from repeated contact with florist wire, I was at a Wegman's and saw boxwood wreaths on sale for $17.99.  Next year I may just buy them.