Hello all,
Above is a photo of our Lucy giving a demonstration at our recent Ikebana International meeting. It was the first for the year and, also, the first to be held at 6.00 pm, giving the opportunity to working members to attend.

Phillip Rhodes was our guest speaker, a milliner of vast experience and talent. He brought along four examples of the types of hats he creates for theatre, ballet and opera and we were quite engrossed in his description of the work - the time involved as well as sourcing materials for his projects etc.

Following his talk, Lucy Papas demonstrated two arrangements referencing the glamorous hats worn by stars of  the silver screen of a by-gone-era. Picture Audrey Hepburn, Larna Turner et al.

In her first arrangement, Lucy used a palm spathe, which she coloured egg shell blue on the outside and gold on the inside.She placed it on a tall thin vase, saying it reminded her of a lady's elegant neck. She used orange flowering gum as a mass and a fresh, green stick for line.

In her second arrangement she used leaves only - two strelitzia leaves, aspidistra leaves and New Zealand flax.

Please go to II Melbourne and click on 'Blog' to see more photographs from the meeting.

For my arrangement I used a very distressed, asian, bamboo hat. The type one sees in photos and videos of farmers working in paddy fields. This hat lived on the head of the scarecrow the grandchildren and I built last year. It kept getting blown off and I kept putting it back on until it practically disintegrated. When I picked it up intending to throw it in the bin, the horder in me came to the fore and I put it in the storeroom. When I was looking for inspiration for this arrangement, I found the hat!

We had fun making the scarecrow but he was totally useless in
scaring away the birds. I even saw one sitting on his arm.

And, below is the arrangement with what was left of the hat. Despite having glued quite a bit of it together, it is still quite fragile. I used a newly acquired, coppery vase, smoke bush flowers that I had sprayed gold and placed at the back. I used 2 white hydrangeas on the top of the hat and one underneath. The two long-stemmed crucifix orchids provided the line.

Whilst working in the garden I came across a number of fruit on my Japanese flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica). It's not uncommon to find one or two fruit but this many is unusual. So I collected them all and made this arrangement, using my one and only sun flower. I took care in the placement of the stems to remain upright without resting on the lip of the container. It is a fitting example of the lesson in Book 3 - Showing lines at base.

A close up of the fruit

In a previous post I mentioned my lovely next door neighbours. Well, the next arrangement is dedicated to Marisa for giving me these two bromeliad flowers. She said she didn't use them herself because they were too floppy. I told her to use a tall vase and let them hang down.

My arrangement

Marisa's arrangement. She was very happy with it

I leave you with this next arrangement in another, newly acquired vase from Dawn George.

Bye for now,
Emily