Sunflowers and Pumpkins

Sunflowers and Pumpkins - what could be more seasonal than that? I have combined the two here with some of my vintage treasures. 

The bright yellow in the sunflowers is always a challenging colour - but as I like a challenge I decided to have a go! 

I mixed the sunflowers with a few branches of Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' - a shrub with very dark leaves that later in the season turns a beautiful red colour.

I experimented a little bit with some of the sunflowers. With three of the flowers I removed all the petals leaving the green sepals and the dark centre intact. It might seam a bit drastic and destructive - but I have wanted to try it for a while and I decided I really liked the look. Next time I might do it to the whole bunch! 
If you don't want to do it straight away to a newly bought bunch of sunflowers you could start the arrangement with the yellow petals intact and as the flowers start to fade you could pull them off later. That way you would end up with almost two completely different arrangements.

The usual bright orange pumpkins is another colour that a lot of people have a hard time with. I love all the different sizes, shapes and colours of pumpkins that are available. I especially like the off-white in all shapes and sizes and here i have arranged a group of them on a green 1940's platter from Sweden.  

Over the years I have collected vintage dice in different colours and sizes. I picked out some in matching colours for my little display.

Picking out ribbons from my collection is always fun. Here are two Jane Means ribbons - a brown stitched one and a grosgrain brown and orange striped one. Both very seasonal in colour and all I did was put them in a vintage apothecary mortar.

Have a lovely autumn day!

xoxo Ingrid