Happy New Year!

Hi everyone!  Welcome to the second installment of Floriography!  We're kicking off the new year with a New Year's Eve inspired arrangement - complete with champagne and fireworks! Permanent Roommate and I had a pretty low-key New Year's celebration.  We went out for dinner then came back home for board games and champagne!  We made it to midnight and watched some fireworks from our porch, but were out like lights by 12:30!

For this design, I really wanted to mimic the aspects of celebrating a New Year's Eve.  My first thought was to put the arrangement in a champagne glass, but what would I put in it?  Then it hit me like a bright flash of light in a dark sky... fireworks! (See what I did there?) As you can see in my sketches, I had originally wanted something other than the spider mums.  Blood Lilies really have the look I was going for.  But not being an established florist has its disadvantages in terms of being able to get the flowers you want.  Then, I saw these great paint-splattered spider mums!  I thought they were so cute with their speckled petals!

Sketch - sorry it's so hard to see - I'll use a darker pencil next time!

The "fireworks"

The "Champagne"

The materials and tools I used are pictured below.  I used a champagne glass as my container filled with amber glass marbles to achieve the look of champagne and for stability.  My plant materials were white Spider Chrysanthemums and a couple of sprigs of Arborvitae.  I used scissors from my kitchen (oops, I need some dedicated shears), floral tape, 20 gauge wire, wire cutters and white ribbon for the finishing touch.  I used the wire to manipulate the heads of the spider mums so they would face front instead of upward.

The Materials

The Tools

And here's the final product!  This was a fun and quick project for me.  I really had a blast making this!  Stay tuned for the week after next's post where I lament not getting a real winter in Texas by creating a festive all white arrangement!

Lesson in Floriography: White chrysanthemums symbolize truth, honesty and loyal love.