16 Mar Monday…with lots of arrangements, workshops…and views!

I decided that I’d like to run small workshops from my home, as my home is my creative hub, and at home I have my colours, props, garden, kitchen…and table of course, right at my fingertips!

I don’t have a large house by any stretch of the imagination which is why I knew I’d have to keep numbers very limited.

The workshops this weekend were so enjoyable, I think in part, because I could morph my whole house into an artist’s palette of colour, texture and shape for all the participants to play with.

I wanted to try and expand people’s idea of composition beyond the realms of just flowers and try to get them to feel the creative importance of playing and experimenting with other medium, and letting things happen and appear without much thought…

Creating a piece of artistic work, even if it’s just for Instagram or as part of a blog, is often exhausting because you’re using a part of your brain in a very concentrated way to create a reflection of something inside you which you can’t express in words.

I think lots of women are made to feel that this sort of creative process is just a bit of pretty nonsense…I think that it’s really not!

Yes, it’s pretty and yes, in the grand scheme of banking and business and other grown up things in the City,  it may appear unnecessary, but it should be something we actually own as a personal artistic expression, without feeling the need to put ourselves down, and in some way place women who use flowers in some category of ‘women who just play with flowers while they’re bringing up the kids’.

Japanese Ikebana acknowledges the importance of its spiritual, creative and artistic importance…flower arranging is an important piece of Japanese culture.

Exploring creativity is so essential to everything in life, even though people in grown up jobs may think otherwise…maybe they are too tired and important after a day at the office to look at how aesthetic balance may have a positive effect on life.

However painting, to a lot of people, is clearly too intimidating to just have a go at…picking up a brush or a palette knife, and daubing in a free and expressive way on a large blank canvas is not only expensive, messy and frightening, it’s also, more often than not, downright disheartening!

Flowers however, create a palette of colour, texture and movement which you don’t have to mix like paint, and they create beauty in front of you before you even have a go at arranging them…even if your arrangement doesn’t work, the flowers on their own will, and what better and more accessible medium to work with, particularly for busy, creative women at home trying to bring up children, is there…other than dried pasta, coloured paper and glue?!

Anyway, that’s the sort of thing which was buzzing around my head before the workshops this weekend…I create my compositions from the starting point of an artist who normally uses paint, and I try to use colours, props and textures as freely as if I’d squeezed them out of tubes of paint, and hopefully I was able to encourage a bit of that freeness of expression in what we did this weekend…there certainly were some amazing compositions in collage, prop arranging and last but not least… flowers!

We put colláges together and then punctuated them with flowers…

…here a two which were put together by Nicole …and Emma from Sew Recycled……and Sarah
 We also worked arranging props…sort of 3D colláge… these props below were chosen by Sue, which proved quite tricky ( especially that blue marble )…but we got there in the end I chose some bits and pieces too…the brown electrical tape was not massively appealing, but I wanted people to try and make things work in a composition which weren’t just pretty… On Sunday people played with collecting a rainbow of props…these were some chosen by Emma from A Quite Style..

and these were props chosen by Andie from Kippercklock 

After lunch we moved onto the flowers… …and I demonstrated my type of composition with added textures literally dropped in from the kitchen… Natasha from Takingamomentintime allowed me to re-arrange her composition and add the textures…mess isn’t always up everyone’s street! I demonstrated in purples on Sunday…with and without popcorn …and then everyone had a go at messing with everything This was Emma’s composition…before the sugar this was part of Beth’s composition …and this might just have been my favourite composition from NicoleSo, like I said, it was a lovely workshop weekend ( and Sally at Plooms Pens  provided these amazing Mother’s day gifts on the Sunday! ) …but I just can’t help wondering where the boys who like flower arranging are hiding!!

The photo below is courtesy of my late Granny…and look, boys playing with flowers!

…I want some boys too, at my workshops next time!P.S there are lots of great photos which the participants took if you have a look on Instagram using the hashtag: 5ftinfworkshop