Christmas Plants/Flowers/Bouquets?

Laneyboo

Hi there,

I've been wanting to purchase two little trees for outside my house to stick a little set of lights on to look festive but i'm finding they are very expensive (around £25 each for a topiary style ball or pyramid tree) and im wondering if anyone knows any good places online for this kind of thing?

Also i'd like some really festive looking flower displays for in my home but dont really want to fork out for the pre-made bouquet prices. What sort of flowers should i use to create my own little displays? I'm a complete novice but i have a great eye for detail so if i knew some festive flowers that'd be great.

Hopefully someone here will give me some gems of wisdom!

:j

Laneyboo

.. or not :rolleyes:

shazziere

Leneyboo....do you have a focus store near you cos im sure i saw in one of the newspaper flyers that they had those ball tree things (or similar on bogof.They were £24.99 each(so 2 for this price with the bogof).

kethry

Laneyboo wrote: »

Also i'd like some really festive looking flower displays for in my home but dont really want to fork out for the pre-made bouquet prices. What sort of flowers should i use to create my own little displays? I'm a complete novice but i have a great eye for detail so if i knew some festive flowers that'd be great.

Something i do every year: i have, permanently on the living room wall, 2 candle sconces.. black metal, most of the time they hold 2 short white candles and they just frame the pictures i have on the wall, people don't take much notice of them.

At Christmas though, they hold a large display... I get some florists foam, oasis, and cut a roughly circular block out of it, (the foam is easy to cut with a kitchen knife) enough to hold a large candle with some space beneath. The candle sconces themselves have a metal spike sticking up, and i stick the foam onto that when its all ready to go up there. Then i go collecting: there's a large wild holly bush near where i live, so i take a few sprigs of that, some pine or fir, various winter foliage. It doesn't need to stay "green", as long as it doesn't go completely flat and pathetic when it dies. some of it i spray silver, some of it i spray gold - i tend to go for the "frosted" effect, rather than block colours. I have some fircones, and of course my candles, beautiful white and gold decorated candles. And i make a display from that. I don't have any formal florestry training, and i don't wet the oasis, in this case, i just try to make something that is balanced and looks good. The hardest part is being aware that there are two of them, so they do have to look reasonably similar, although they are never going to look identical. Because the sconces are right up against the wall they don't need to be 3D, and you can move things around to suit what you think works.

Anyway, at this point you're probably wondering what the hell she's burbling about so its easier to just show you:




That was my first attempt, in 2005. i also hung a ribbon from the bottom of the sconce and stapled my christmas cards to it (here). It looks really effective, hanging down either side of the picture.. you can see that here - i prefer them with the ribbons, from the wider perspective, than without - it gives more balance, i think. This one gives you a bit of a closeup so you can see the details of some of the greenery i used. It was fine up there for 2 weeks, unwatered. The leftovers i used to make a display for the windowsill in the bathroom, which is a high up window so i wasn't worried about it being knocked over (there simply was no space anywhere else in the flat to have that kind of thing out).

Anyway. the florists foam, oasis, isn't expensive - couple quid for a block? - and most of the greenery i got free from the local footpath, ivy growing up walls, that kind of thing. you could use christmas tree offcuttings, mistletoe, anything like that. You could attach ribbons to part of it, fixed with pins.. really the limit is your imagination. Oh, and it need to be reasonably balanced. I found the easiest way to achieve that without worrying that it would balance onto the floor when i lifted it onto the candle sconce was to stand the foam on an upright toilet roll tube while i worked, thus the balance was built into the display. The other tip is to remember that you only have so much "back" space before the display hits the wall, so anything going in at the back has to be fairly upright.

About the trees for outside: you could do a lot worse than to get florists foam and make a pyramid from it, then use dressmaking pins to work with tinsel and greenery in the same way to make a couple of small "trees" to bracket your front door. you could work in your christmas lights too, with outdoor lights. you can buy tape to hold the foam together, which is easily covered with your greenery/tinsel.

hope that helps!

keth
xx