Easter Basket

Last week my friend, Lorie, and I had a little crafty evening out doing some flower arranging.  I was amazed that Lorie hadn’t done any before as (like me) she’s done most things! The tuition was from All About Flowers but the event was held at 1086 wine bar, both of which are in the same Botley Mills complex.  It’s a glorious building with lots of nooks, crannies and beams and, unsurprisingly, used to be a flour mill.

We began by securing our saucer and foam block into the basket using florists’ tape and pins to hold the tape into the foam.

The idea was to start at the bottom and work up so the first layer was to get the big bits of greenery in so the foam was obscured.

As both mine and Lorie’s philosophy with flower arranging is “more is more”, we then added more foliage, trying to leave enough foam free to stick the flowers into!

We then placed the focal flowers, the rose, irises and tulips, into position.  It was supposed to be a basket that could be viewed from all sides but mine quickly developed a front, which didn’t bother me.

As we’d been working so hard, we stopped for some sustenance in a glass of fizz and a scone with jam and clotted cream.  Delicious!  Once these had been devoured, we put in the remaining flowers which were veronica, lisianthus and daffodils.  We also added a large twisted willow branch and a smaller multi-stemmed branch for hanging our eggs from.

The final flourish was a hessian and ribbon bow.  It’s actually quite a large arrangement but I managed to get it home without incident in the footwell of my car.  The flowers are opening up now and the display looks beautiful in my lounge, definitely a herald of spring.