Congratulations to Cathy on arranging her way to 7 years of weekly, beautiful, quirky and inspiring vases! Each week Cathy collects and accessorises her vase with an object of interest (sometimes that is just the vase itself). The object reflects her theme and often allows her to relate a story. So if you’ve never noticed this meme before, see what you’ve been missing! Click straight over to Cathy’s blog and take a gander at today’s ‘challenged’ entries: An arrangement without blooms (there’s a little tale behind that of course … go check).
Anyhow, for my vase I’ve concentrated on leaves. Fallen wisteria leaves in fact, because after two weeks of illuminating our patio with a golden roof, they’ve fallen off, en masse. I am going to have to clear the mess up fairly soon, but in the meantime I’ve been making faux flowers with them today. Is that allowed? Is it in the spirit of the challenge? Maybe not, but I’ve had fun anyway.
A leaf flower, made from fallen wisteria leaves clustered around a heliopsis seed head and fixed together with a bit of wire.
To start with I was just bunching leaves together. Then I thought that they would look better with contrasting centres, rather like a rudbeckia flower. So I collected some heliopsis seed heads and made those the centre of the flowers. This worked well as it gave me a stem to hold and made fixing the wire around the bunch much easier.
Vase of wisteria leaves!
In fact I got lazy and started fixing the flowers together with those small elastic bands you get around bunches of asparagus in the supermarket.
A flore pleno version of the wisteria leaf flower!
I experimented a bit with the number of leaves to include. If I’d started to work on the vase earlier I might have had the time to play with dark leaf inner rings and brighter, larger leaves at the outside. Ah well, next time!
Leaf flowers arranged posy style with surrounding green leaves
Then I set the ‘flowers’ in a small, flared glass vase and arranged them posy-style, surrounding the wisteria leaves with more leaves: echium leaves, oak leaves, cosmos leaves and some birch twigs.
And so, at least I get to enjoy the wisteria’s autumn colour for a bit longer and I do hope that this vase meets the 7 year anniversary challenge!
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You did a great job with the leafy bouquet. I’m surprised the wisteria leaves didn’t crumble in the process as all the leaves on my deciduous trees seem to do.
Thank you Kris. The leaves were falling as I was making them, so they were fresh and flexible, luckily! 😉
Amazing! That is so pretty and so very creative. Love it! I envy your patience too, fiddling around with wire and elastic bands! 😃 I do hope this posy lasts well for you.
Cheers Cathy. They really weren’t fussy to make though, except for lining up the ends!
Aw, this is so creative, Allison – and of course it is ‘allowed’! I love it when people think out of the box, and that’s why I didn’t make any suggestions about the potential contents of a bloomless vase. Have you had a sharp frost, for all your wisteria leaves to fall at once? The end result is so effective, especially with the additional foliage and methinks it’s a technique to remember for another time too. I was trying to work out the placement of your vase in your last photo, which is clearly next to apond, but what is the structure in the top left?
Thanks Cathy. We had three frosts of varying degrees a few days ago, but I don’t think that is what caused the drop. It seems to happen most year. Re. the faux flowers: I’d also like to try making them out with red dogwood or cherry. The odd building in the pond reflection is a small summerhouse. I must do a tour round the garden sometime!
Ah, it’s a relection – I was puzzled by the scale, so that explains it 😁
I had to smile when I rambled round the garden the next day and found a carpet of wisteria leaves here – they are not all off yet, but there was a gentle breeze all day and they were clearly in need of just a nudge to fall!
Lol. With yours stretching across your house I imagine it sheds loads of leaves!
Indeed, but fortunately they are fairly contained there and don’t get blown about – general leaf sweeping is my main task for today, subject to the weather!
How clever of you, Allison! This is a brilliant answer to Cathy’s challenge… I love it!
🙂 Thanks Eliza
I love this Allison, what a fabulous idea. You have given me ideas for a Christmas arrangement.
Thanks you. Now I am intrigued! I’ll await with interest.
So ingenious Allison, touched my funny bone too. I love this idea, and it certainly matches the criteria. Happy Anniversary.
Thank you Noelle. In fact these were an adaptation of the paper fuchsias I made for my son’s wedding table arrangements. 🙂
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