Let’s have a different song this time.
Unfortunately, getting a market flower stall is not as simple as my friend and I had thought. For various reasons, we’ve had no joy so far. But we’ll keep trying. I really enjoyed planning our stall and the bouquets and posies I wanted to make, which are all inspired by Christmas songs. As I’m so keen to make them anyway, I bought lots of flowers from the market so I could start making them as presents for people. Here are three that I made for my tutors and the technician at college. They work so hard teaching us and organising flowers and sundries for all the students, and I feel very lucky to be doing my course.
This floaty one is called Walking in the Air. It’s funny, because I wrote out the kind of material I wanted to use in the arrangement weeks ago, such as fountain grass and lisianthus, and the delicate, ethereal effect I wanted it to have, and when I finally made it, it was just how I imagined it would be.
This pretty one is Fairytale of New York. I wanted it to be white, pale pink and green, and I thought the pastel colours of the anemones and Little Silver spray roses, the delicate narcissi and the big, sweet-smelling O’Hara roses would help to create a ‘fairytale’ effect. I also listened to The Pogues’ and Kirsty McColl’s song again and realised that there are some sweet lyrics in it, amongst all the insults!
And the last one is Blue Christmas. Due to budget constraints, I couldn’t buy all of the flowers I’d originally planned to use, so this arrangement didn’t really turn out how I’d hoped. But I think these anemones and beautifully scented muscari are pretty blue, while the thistles and eucalyptus are lovely and Christmassy. I have to confess, when I planned to do a Blue Christmas posy, I had the Shakin’ Stevens version in my head (I’m sorry, Elvis). He was my idol when I was about three years old. If I do this design again, I’ll see if I can get some denim ribbon to tie around it, in honour of him!
