How to make a Dried Hydrangea Wreath

This fall I decided to use some of my hydrangeas to make a dried flower wreath 

for the front hallway. 

One popular method for drying hydrangea is to put them in a jar or vase with about an inch of water. By the time the water disappears, the flowers are dry. 

Another easy way to dry them is to hang bunches of flowers to dry. Simply secure them with an elastic band and hang them in a cool, dry place that out of direct sunlight.

When I decided to make a wreath I began by drying some flowers. Then I tried to tuck the dried hydrangeas into position on a grape vine wreath. It didn't work at all! 

Dried hydrangeas are brittle and I ended up breaking most of the flowers. What a mess it made on my kitchen counter!

So I started over.

Hydrangea paniculata 'Little Lime'

This time I used fresh flowers. 

With the cool fall temperatures, hydrangeas are already dry and papery. Fresh stems are strong and woody making them easier to use.

I found that it was best to attach the bow first and then work around it.

Take a length of wide red ribbon and fashion a bow. 

Turn the bow over and insert a fine florist's wire through the centre knot. 

Place the bow onto the wreath and poke the wires through the grape vines to the back. Turn the wreath over and twist the ends of the wire closed.

Cut the hydrangea flowers to approximately 8-10" in length.

Remove the leaves (Sorry, I missed a couple when I was taking pictures).

It doesn't really matter where you begin to assemble your wreath. Just make sure you work in a single direction.

Take a hydrangea flower and tuck the stem in among the grape vines. I found that the maze of grape vines held the flowers really well, but if you want to make them even more secure, you could tie on some florist's wire and wrap the wreath with wire as you go.

Once you get on a roll, the wreath comes together very quickly. 

I think my finished hydrangea wreath will look great in my front hall this holiday season.

A few Highlights from the Christie Antique Show

Sometimes it is the weird stuff that catches my eye. I mean- where would you put something like this?

The day was perfect for this year's Christie Antique Classic- sunny, but not too hot. 

The shoppers were out in numbers, but most seem to limit themselves to things they can carry off the show field (unlike the Big Boy Hamburger mascot).

Here is another oddity: a bull-sized barbecue pit! Can you envisage a spot for it on your back deck? 

Shabby neutrals continue to be popular.

As does homespun-look linen furniture.

Paint it turquoise and someone is bound to buy it!

I thought this update was well done, but I question the color. The piece of furniture itself suggests master bedroom, but the color says little girl's room or maybe baby's room.

I noticed that the confused color choice left this piece unsold at the end of the day.

Here the propping, color choice and the piece of furniture all say baby's room.

One of my favourite dealers does these great little arrangements using rustic antiques and flowers.

Tea with milk and sugar any one?

Coleus and other annuals in an old toolbox.

What do you think? Do flowers make a good update for this bedpan? 

The flowers were sure pretty!

A herb "pot".

And that's it for the highlights.

Have a great weekend!

Two Magazines to Check Out

I used to love Martha Stewart's Living, but in recent years, the magazine seems to have lost its way. I wasn't able to find a good alternative, until I accidentally stumbled upon Sweet Paul. 

Sweet Paul had everything I felt had gone missing from Martha Stewart's magazine: great lifestyle and decorating articles, yummy food and fun, crafty projects to make. The graphic design was inventive and the photography was amazing!

A print subscription for Canada was a bit prohibitive, but luckily enough the digital version was very affordable: four issues a year for $9.99

This is the Spring issue, which celebrates the magazine's 5th anniversary. The cover is an artwork by artist Helen Hoverkamp. To make her photographs, Ellen's Hoverkamp painstakingly arranges plant specimens facedown on the glass of a large format flatbed scanner. Love her work!

Wonderful food photography from the Spring Issue of Sweet Paul Magazine.

The Spring issue also includes: artful Easter eggs, cocktails and cakes, copper pipe crafts, green and fresh spring flavours, and more artwork by Ellen Hoverkamp among other things.

The Sweet Paul blog is also worth looking into.

A good friend told me about the next magazine. Covet Garden is for those of you who like quirky,"undecorated" interiors. Each issue features the home of a single person or couple. It's not a big magazine, but then size isn't everything! I find I enjoy each issue.

The best news is that a digital subscription is FREE! You sign up by email and a link to the latest issue arrives in your email inbox each month.

The magazine also has a blog and a book in print. Go check it out. You have nothing to lose!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Upcycled Easter Baskets

I am fully convinced that many decorative household items are given away because they are an ugly color and people can't see past that. 

Such was the case for the first Easter basket in this post. It looked ugly because, the decorative metal edging and chicken wire were painted black. 

To give the basket a new lease on life, I spray painted an Antique White. The basket came with three tin pots which I elected to leave just the way they were.

Add in some pansies and a rusted Easter bunny silhouette and suddenly the whole thing 

looks vintage and rather pretty.

This next project started with a lined wicker basket that I got at a charity shop for just under a dollar. Charity shops are a great place to find old ceramic containers and baskets that were once used for floral arrangements. 

The only thing the basket needed in this case was a few flowers.

To make this next arrangement I used:

• 3 small pots of mini-daffodils

• a small pot of green ivy

• sheet moss

• yellow ribbon

• bird's nest

• 3 candy or plastic eggs

• 2 birds

• hot glue and glue gun

• a couple of tooth picks

Directions:

Remove the daffodils from their plastic pots and place them in the wicker basket. 

Fill in where needed with a bit of trailing green ivy.

Cover any visible soil with pieces of the green sheet moss.

Chip on the first little bird to the basket handle. 

Use hot glue to attach the second bird and some eggs to the bird's nest. Using a couple of tooth picks, attach the nest to the moss.

Add a bow.

This final basket was again a sinister shade of black, so I spray painted it Antique White.

To make this next arrangement I used:

• wire basket

• a bottle (or glass vase)

• green sheet moss

• pink hydrangea flowers

• several pieces of green ivy

• pink ribbon

Directions:

Place a bottle in the centre of the wire basket (you could use a small glass vase just as well). Place large pieces of the green more sheet moss around the outside of the bottle to hold the bottle in place. The moss also helps to disguise the container/ bottle for your flowers.

Add the flowers, trailing pieces of ivy making sure they are in the water.

Tie up the basket with a pink bow.

Happy Easter!

Decoupage Easter Eggs

Easter is almost here and it's time to do a little spring decorating. Making Easter eggs is always fun and like try out a new technique for creating them each year. 

This year I made decoupage eggs using tissue paper and paper dinner napkins.

This is an easy project, but a little messy, so when I say easy, I don't mean a project you might want to try to do with the kids. You are likely to have sticky fingers and Mod Podge everywhere!

To make this rose covered eggs I used tissue paper that I found at the Dollar store (the kind of tissue wrapping paper that is generally used to stuff gift bags).

For this project you will need:

• tissue paper or paper napkins 

• scissors

• a brush for applying the Mod Podge

• a flat sided brush

• Mod Podge

• styrofoam eggs

• Varathane (I used a latex, Satin finish Varathane that cleans up with water)

Here is the only tricky part: Most tissue paper and Japanese paper napkins are perfect for decoupage. Dinner napkins are however, 2-ply and are composed of two thin layers of paper bonded together. For decoupage, the thiner the paper the better. Fine sheets of paper allow the edges of your cutout motifs to blend into one another better. So to begin, you want to pull apart the two layers of paper on any dinner napkins you might want to use. 

Start in the corner and work the 2 plys separate with your nails. Once you have worked the 2 pieces apart in the corner, it should be easy to pull the two sheets of paper apart.

Keep the 1-ply with your floral motif and discard the 1-ply of plain backing.

Cut out pieces of the decorative motif you've selected with your scissors.

Apply some Mod Podge to the side of your styrofoam egg with a brush. 

Place your cut out floral motif on the egg and work it flat into the wet Mod Podge using your fingers or a flat sided brush.

Apply further pieces until your egg is covered with flowers. Don't worry about the overlapping pieces of paper. This decoupage method is very forgiving and the edges disappear.

One last step! Finish one half of the surface of your eggs at a time with the latex Varathane. You can skip this final step if you don't want bother, but making the extra effort to finish the eggs will allow you to wipe them off with a damp cloth if they get dusty.

To make my little egg arrangement, I filled a little blue bowl with wood shavings and then placed a white chocolate bunny in the centre. To hold him upright, I surrounded him with foil wrapped chocolate Easter eggs. 

I tied a bow around the bunny's neck, added my decoupage eggs and a few faux apple blossoms.

 I used a Japanese paper cocktail napkin to make this butterfly egg. 

The hyacinths in my floral arrangement are real, but the lily of the valley are faux flowers.

The Japanese paper was very thin, so it was great to work with. I picked up the bird nest 

from Michael's Craft Store.

Next I tried using a dinner napkin with roses and blue butterflies.

 The two white ceramic Easter bunnies were found at Walmart for under $10 each. 

I dressed them up with blue bows. 

I've has some really pretty blue and white dinner napkins stashed away in the back of the cupboard for years. 

I figured this was the perfect time to dig them out and do something creative with them.

Boxed up with a pretty bow, I thought they might make a nice gift.

By the way, these pale pink and mauve hyacinths smelled positively divine!

Happy Spring decorating!