It would not be spring without my Japanese iris.Their perfection must be enjoyed in
 an ikebana arrangement.
I made this container many years ago. The surface at the bottom is made from
crushed green and blue glass

Hello all,

My apologies for my lengthy absence from this blog and, I confess, the reason I'm writing now is because we have a power failure and I can't do the things I had planned for tonight. I will spare you the details of my hectic life with one notable exception - the Baptism of my little granddaughter, Althea, which took place yesterday.

I was heavily involved in the preparations of the baptism with the cake, the flowers and making dresses for the girls as well as my own outfit.

Our princess with her very proud papou!

And here she is modeling

The Christening cake

This large arrangement was placed at the entry of the restaurant

So now, back to ikebana.

Two lessons ago I set the theme 'glass containers' and below are three examples I made. It was just coincidence that I have used two containers in each one.

Loquat branches and Siberian iris in large containers

The vases have holes through which the stems of the
osage oranges pass

Squiggly grass and Siberian iris

For the last two classes with Elizabeth, we were to do an arrangement 'with leaves and roses' and an arrangement 'in an ordinary household item', respectively. Below are my two pieces.

Dorianthus palmeri leaf, fish bone fern, spuria iris leaf
and rose (Mr Lincoln)

 

This dogwood was given to me as a seedling by my friend Hazel McNaught, whom we lost
many years ago. Her dogwood is now a small tree and much loved.

And for my last lesson of the year we all did 'a celebratory arrangement'. We had quite a lot of fun with this and I'm including most of the arrangements made.

Helen Novic

Margaret Wilson

Robyn Unglik

Nicole McDonald

Soo Mei Leong (Book 1)

Vicky Kalokathis

Bredenia Raquel

The next three arrangements are by Lucy Papas, who is quite prolific.

And the next five arrangements are by me. OK, so I went a little overboard!

I would like to leave you with a piece I call 'the embarrassment of riches', in which I used three of my giant strelitzia nicolai flowers and monstera leaves.

Bye for now.

Emily