I can’t remember when I came across the Trees and What Not blog, but I can remember chatting to its author Helen on twitter in the early days of What You Sow and she was in fact, my first real customer (ie, not a member of my family).
Helen’s blog is a wonderful place, full of flowers, crafts, nature, hearty food and conker the cat.
It’s the Sunday morning of blogs.
Helen has created an autumn themed posy as part of the What You Sow Party for you to display at your party and impress your guests, or as a present to take along to a party you’ve been invited to.
I’ll let Helen tell you how it;s done.
I first became interested in flowers and floristry a few years back but I didn’t follow up my interests until last year when I began my floristry training.
At the time I was volunteering at a community allotment and was becoming increasingly interested in the growing side of flowers and edibles. I decided to find a course and found one not far from me at Northop College in North Wales.
I have since completed the course and I am now a trained florist. My full time job is teaching crafts in a college for adults with learning disabilities but I love to find any excuse to work with my floristry skills and have a dream to transform a Fairway taxi into a mobile florists in about 5 years from now. Until then I continue to work on bits and pieces for people and on peoples weddings.
I did a wedding in August which you can see here. I think I would be willing to travel all over to work on weddings so if you are interested and like my style feel free to get in touch, Lyndsey will forward you my details.
Today I am going to show a tutorial on how to make a small posy for a jam jar or vase. It could be used to adorn your table or sill during a party you may be hosting, or to take along to a party you are attending.
There is nothing quite like fresh flowers to create a welcoming and cheerful mood in any environment and I am a firm believer in the traditional gift to say ‘thank you for having me’ with fresh beautifully arranged flowers.
First of all you need a selection of flowers, I am making an autumnal posy so have used colours with this theme. The flowers need conditioning; this means cutting the stems at least one inch from the bottom at a 45º angle and leaving them to have a drink, preferably overnight so they have had a good drink before they are used.
Conditioning also involves taking off all the leaves on the stem that would be below your tying point. In this case we are making a posy so our tying point is quite high so most of the leaves and all the thorns need to be removed. Put your materials into piles of the same type so you can see them easily as you add them to the posy.
For this design I would recommend four materials and at least six stems of each material you are using.
You start off with a foliage material which for me is the blossom and a flower material. These should be held vertically. Hold them where your tying point will be, this is approximately 4 inches from the top as shown below.
The next material added with begin the spiral, this is added at an angle and each material added from now on will be added at an angle as shown below.
You can keep rotating the posy in your hand and adding a new material.
This begins to create a spiralling, even distribution.
Keep looking at the top of the posy so you can see where the gaps are and you can evenly distribute color keeping the posy balanced.
This is how spiralled stems look.
When you feel happy with what you have added tie the posy where you have been holding it.
Now the stems need cutting to the same length. The general rule is that one third of the stem length should be above the tie and two thirds of the stem length should be below the tie. However in this case I have cut my stems slightly shorter to go in a jam jar or small vase.
Now the posy is ready; ENJOY IT