Floral Crafts

Making Your Own Floral Arrangement Here's what you'll need to get started... 1. Scissors or wire cutters. 2. Brown or green floral tape to match the stems. 3. Hot glue gun. 4. Recycled twist tie for hanging wreath on the door. (Like you get from a bag of bread). 5. Wreath Base - Scout around, you can find these amazingly cheaply and in a variety of styles and sizes. Mine came from a car boot sale for 50p and a smaller one was about 25p in the hobbycraft sale last January. 6. Florist wire. 7. Decorations - Various flowers artficial or real (artificial lasts longer), leaves, ribbons and any other items you wish to add to your arrangement. Start by choosing either the main colour you want (like blue, pink, white, etc...) or a particular flower (like roses, tulips, etc...) or a theme, Yule, Ostara, Samhain for example and then add some other flowers that will compliment them well. Selecting varied shapes and sizes works well too.	Look for silk flowers that are already grouped together with one base stem, they only cost a couple of pounds and you can get a lot of flowers that are already coordinated! Make sure to look the flowers over good when picking them out. Check for any missing pieces that may have fallen off at the shop. If you get home and still find an empty stem, you can either tuck it behind another flower or cut it off. Group the flowers together in your hands in the shop, if they look good together chances are they'll look good on your wreath too. The amount of flowers you need to buy will depend on the size of your wreath base, and whether you want to cover it completely or just give it some colour (which is also the cheaper way to go). I added just a few items to my Ostara wreath and it looked good despite not being full of lowers. I twisted round a little artificial ivy and added a few moon daisies and jonquils. Sometimes less is more, although not if we're talking chocolate!
	There are tons of little things out there that will look pretty on a wreath, be creative and use whatever you want! For my latest Yule wreath I wanted something to represent the animal kingdom, so Ichoose a pretty little robin and a pine cone owl, from a recent garden centre trip. You can use all manner of items. Garden centre's as well as craft shops are a very useful resource for these kind of items.
Directions Lay the wreath base on a table as you would like it to hang on your door (prettiest side on top or whatever), then add the twist tie to the back of the top so you can hang it on the door when you're finished. If you want to wait and see how the wreath turns out first, save this step for last. Next, prepare your flowers. Cut flowers to a shorter length (about 4 - 6 inches), with wire cutters or an old pair of scissors, and then wrap stems with a small amount of floral tape if desired. You can even cut off the leaves and do the same thing with them, or use florist stems (the ones with a wire attached) to create a single flower or leaf out of everything that was attached to each stem. After you've got your flowers prepared, group them together by colour or type. Start with one group of flowers and stick them in the wreath one at a time, in whatever pattern you want. Then, work on another group and another until they are all in the wreath.	If you'd like to add a ribbon bow or some kind of decoration, you can either place it in the wreath as you did with the flowers (attaching a leftover floral stem with some tape if needed), or just use a little hot glue. Now, take a step back and see how it looks. If you don't like the way you placed some of the flowers you can carefully pull them out and move them around until you're happy with it. Wreaths also make great gifts all throughout the year... especially for holidays. I hope this has given you the encouragement to give it a try, I know you can do it! Just be creative and send us a picture!

Forum Members Floral Creations

Patmandolin's Beltane Circlet

To Make: Take a length of whatever vine you have handy (I used passion flower vines) and twist into a circle the right size for your head/door/cauldron.

Use more vines (you can use ivy, clematis, or any other trailing plant that won't snap) and keep winding them round the original circle until you have the required thickness. Tuck the ends in to secure them.

Cut flowers to decorate (I used anything blue that was in bloom in my garden including: ceanothus, rosemary, periwinkle, grape hyancinths and bluebells). Thread these between the twisted stems so that they are held securely. It looks better if they are all facing the same direction, so start deosil and carry on in that direction.

Finally, use a length of narrow satin ribbon (I used pale green) to twine loosely round the whole wreath. If you want to wear it as a maiden's circlet, use a longer length of ribbon and let the ends hang down as ribbons at the back.

Patmandolin's Yule Wreaths

Pat sent in two lovely wreaths she made for Yule, the basic construction is the same for both wreaths, the information to turn the basic wreath into a table wreath or door wreath is under each photo:-

Pat's Instructions: These two wreaths (one a hanging wreath for the door and the other a table wreath with candles) were created using the traditional German method. For this you need a circular straw base (available from good craft shops) and a huge quantity of double-ended German pins.

Use fresh green material (spruce is best - either the Normann type or ordinary blue spruce). Use small cut pieces to cover the base. Pin them with the German pins, starting in the centre and continuing the same way, overlapping the pieces until the entire base is covered all over, front back and sides. Check that you have left no gaps.

Decoration: If you want to use a ribbon decoration, buy the wire edged kind. Pin one end at the back of your wreath and then wind it loosely round and round and then pin again at the back.

Patmandolin's Yule Wreath For a hanging wreath, now hang it up so that you can see it properly to balance the rest of the decorations (you can get special sharp-ended wreath hangers). Now pin any other decorations you like around the circle. Until you are practised at this, it's best to use uneven numbers of the same item, as it is easier to get an informal balance than with using even numbers. Use bows, pine cones, baubles (buy the ready-wired type, not hanging ones) or whatever takes your fancy.) Make a large ribbon bow and attach it at either the top of the bottom. Now hang it up and wait for compliments! Note: These wreath's make good presents, though after making several, you will end up with sore fingers from pushing in the pins!	Patmandolin's Yule Table Wreath For the table wreath - these are sometimes known as Advent krantzes; and you are supposed to light one candle on each of the four Sundays in Advent. This is obviously a hijacking of a pagan Yule tradition, so you can safely ignore that! The method is the same, except you will want to wire the candles in place. You can use tapers, ball candles or church type. Either way, you will need to use stiff florist's wire. You need 3 or 4 x 3-inch lengths per candle. Heat each one over a candle flame and push them into the base of the candle. Allow to set and then push gently but firmly into the straw base in a square. try not to get this wrong, as moving them can be quite difficult without breaking the candle. Decorate according to taste.
Whitewitch's Autumn Wreath This has to be my favourite wreath so far, I purchased a twig wreath, and wound pine cones, apples and red ponsettia flowers around it using florist wire. I'm really pleased with the finished result :)	Whitewitch's Pentagram Wreath I decided to use my pentagram wreath that I made ages ago, for this one. Its small and simple. I bought some leaves, holly with berries and little cones with berries and tied them to the ends of the wreath with raffia.
Patmandolin's Mabon Wreath Pat decorated her wreath with pine cones, conkers, cinamon sticks, dried mushrooms, gourds and florist's moss. She made some miniature besoms and wired them in place, and placed a small owl made frome pine cones that she found in the garden centre on the wreath to finish it off.	Moonshadow's Yule Wreath This is the same willow wreath frame that I showed 'dressed' for Ostara in the photo above. For Yule, I spruced it up (sorry hehe!) It was simple to do and very cheap. I used 6 holly and fir sprigs pics from the Asda smart price range and some velvety ribbon with gold trim. Simply weaved in to the willow frame, bow attached and that was it! The hard work was already done for me and the effect was just as good as one of the expensive shop bought wreaths.