Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Decorating Our Front Door

Several years ago I picked up an old fishing creel for a dollar,and now we hang it on the door and decorate it for autumn and Christmas. I thought that I would photograph the arrangement as I put it together so that you can see how easy it is.


I have used fir boughs to bulk out the body of the arrangement. I took a long fir bough and cut it into 8" lengths for this basket. Cut them longer if your container is deeper.


Put your branches with the cut stem at the top in the back of the arrangement for bulk and place the tip ends of the branches in the front. By arranging the stems this way you get a full effect that looks like you are using all branch tips. I don’t use floral foam because most of the time I am doing this on the spur of the moment. I would probably use fewer branches and have more control if I used the floral foam but on the West Coast we have lots of fir trees so I fill the basket abundantly.


Next I put in salal branches. The large oval green leaf is a good contrast to the fir branches. Then I tucked in some cedar branches. When you use cedar you must check to see which way it curves as the foliage on either side of the branch curves to the right or to the left. I tucked in some holly and some branches of a shrub in our yard that I don’t know the name of, but it has oval leaves and red berries.


Finally I wired in some cones. I did tuck one cone in the basket so that the foliage would be held in place. Using floral foam would have made this step unnecessary. I always do the arrangement with the basket hanging on the door so that I can see how it is looking.

I have also done an arrangement in a large cast iron urn by the front door that I'll show in my next post.

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