Woodland Flowers

Morning Friends!

Firstly apologies for not getting back to you sooner - a small health glitch AGAIN. Honestly, I wish that I could rub this year out and start over! Anyway, let's not dwell on negatives.....

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned a walk in the woods to look for inspiration and materials. Well it is summer in England and that means flowers! I found a piece of birch branch too and suddenly the light over my head went on! The birch branch has made wonderful bases (after a little bit of surgery) for some flowers.

Take a look and tell me what you think!

                      A wildflower meadow!


These were really easy to do. But what will you need?

Pieces of birch wood with the bark still on.
Crochet circles in different colours
Buttons in assorted sizes and shapes
Beads in assorted styles, colours and shapes
large lucite leaves 
medium and small lucite flowers
Scraps of cotton fabrics to match the other things that you have collected
Felt for the bottom of the wood
PVA wood glue
Rusty craft wire
Dremel hot glue gun and glue sticks
Your normal beading and sewing requirements
Some basic tools including a saw, wire cutters and drill



Firstly, cut the birch branch into thick slices about 3 cm wide. The branch was about 4.5-5 cm diameter to begin with.

Then drill a hole in the top of the piece of wood. 

Cut a piece of wire about 15cm long. Curl the wire around a pencil or similar to make it a bit more interesting. The wire will become the flower 'stem'.

Insert one end of the wire into the hole. 

Cut rough flower shapes from the fabric and make the shapes a little larger than the crochet circles. Of course you can make the crochet circles yourself but if you are like me and lack the patience to crochet....they are available from larger craft stores and online too. Haunt ebay and Folksy a bit and see what you can find. I have an inexpensive and  small but growing selection in my Folksy shop, Witch Way. Keep the colours you choose nice and light for summer. As a rule, any Italian ice cream colours are just perfect!  

Anyway, back to the flowers.... cut the flower shapes. You can use a template if you have one or just make circles. 

Attach a crochet circle to the front of each flower shape.

Embellish with beads and buttons or even both!

Now stitch and glue the flower head to the wire stem so that they are quite secure. The hot glue gun is an absolute boon here.

Explore the possibilities with lucite flowers and beads. I have sewn and glued in two quite large green lucite leaves. They look fab and really lift the flower!

Glue a circle of felt to the bottom of the wood so that it protects polished surfaces and looks more professional.

Here are some that I made earlier....Experiment and use what you have. This is a very pretty collection to brighten up a window sill or go down the middle of the table.
  

Ring the changes by making some flowers larger than others and mix them up. Yo-yos (Suffolk puffs) look good on them too. Play around and grow a beautiful garden which never needs watering! remember though that the larger the flower head, the larger the wood has to be because the centre of gravity is quite high up, they need to be stable and if they are too top heavy, they will topple over.

*Please check with authorities before taking wood from the forest floor. This is usually fine but in some cases it is not so double check. The local council is another great place to get a wood offcut as a freebie. The council is always trimming something and if you ask very nicely, they will almost always gladly give you a small offcut.    

Thanks for stopping by!

Debs

xxx