An introduction to floral arranging

Okay, I know the title of the post is "an introduction to floral arranging" but this post is not a tutorial.  I'm currently taking an online floral arranging class from Nicole's Classes just for fun! It's a four-week course and each week there is a homework assignment.  

Here are some of the arrangements I've created for class. 

The first week we were asked to make a hand-tied floral bouquet:

A big English garden-y sort of arrangement.

I didn't use any floral foam to make this rather large arrangement.  Floral foam would have been much easier to use but it's really not environmentally friendly. Hmmm….maybe that would be an excellent thing to invent – environmentally friendly floral foam!  The florists here seem to use a lot of floral foam in their numerous and prolific arrangements.

Left-over flowers arrangements:

Do you see the branches with pink blossoms?  And the ones with leaves and white blossoms?  I forced them to bloom – I cut these branches from the (not yet) flowering trees in front of our house. The rest of the vases are filled with extra flowers from the English garden-y arrangement.

Next up?  Floral head wreaths.  

Starting out with a simple wire wreath and a variety of flowers and leaves:

Finished!

Just in time for Easter! A pretty floral wreath!

I made a second one for Ava:

Here's Ava modeling her floral wreath:

Stay tuned…the last class (it's only a four-week class) will show us how to make wedding bouquets and boutonnieres.