Flowers of the Month - February 2016

3 February - Flowers and Ribbons -Wrapped up Flowers

It's the end of February and I'm back with 'Flowers of the Month' - where I'm featuring all the different flowers and floral arrangements I have posted during the last month. It's been a full and very busy month on the blog.

The title of the post under the image - is also a link to the post - if you would like to see it again or you missed it.

5 February - A Bunch for the Weekend - Blue Hyacinths



7 February - Florets - Floral Quote by Alathea Harampolis and Jill Rizzo



8 February - Tiny Blooms - Snowdrops



12 February - A Bunch for the Weekend - Three Posies of Tulips

14 February - FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - Happy Valentine's Day!



17 February - Creative Ways with Flowers - Orange Flowers



19 February - A Bunch for the Weekend - Scented Stock and Spray Carnations



Florets - Floral Quote by Shane Connolly



22 February - Tiny Blooms - Pink Hyacinths



24 February - Creative Ways with Flowers - Colourful Tulips, Ranunculus and Anemones



26 February - FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - White Flowers for the Table



28 February - Florets - Floral Quote by Grace Bonney

[All Images: Styling and Photography © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]  

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a fabulous floral Monday!

I will be back later in the week with more floral delights from Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

For more floral inspiration follow me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

Florets - Floral Quote - # 101 - by Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge

3 Quotes by Grace Bonney

"Instead of leaving your flowers all the same height, try cutting the stems at varying lengths to create a simple arrangement that is reminiscent of flowers growing in the garden."

"One gorgeous, full-faced flower combined with a little bit of foliage is sometimes all you need to create a show-stopping arrangement. When money and time are tight, it's easiest to let a beautiful flower speak for itself."

"Dome-shaped arrangements are a classic, goof-proof option for a centerpiece. Mixed flowers in tonal colours make a great dressed-up arrangement, while using only one type gives a simple, casual look. Don't fret if your dome is less than perfect: a natural rounded shape will look just as elegant."

  ~ Grace Bonney ~ 

[Grace Bonney - American, founder of the blog Design*Sponge and author of Design*Sponge at Home.]

[Quote: from Design*Sponge at Home (2011).]

[Flowers: Anemones.]

[Containers: Vintage milk bottle.]

[Styling and photography © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]  

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a fabulous floral Sunday!

I will be back next week with more floral delights from Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

For more floral inspiration follow me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - White Flowers for the Table

The theme for this weeks FLOWERS - is 'White Flowers for the Table'. I decided to do a table setting using the two key words in the theme as inspiration - white and table. So I gathered together a whole lot of different white objects, some clear glass as well as the added touches of silver and green.

The flowers I'm using are all white - roses, parrot tulips and hyacinths - even though the flowers are white there are a lot of added green in them - buds, stalks, leaves and multi-coloured petals. 

I put everything out on a table just to see what it all looked like together - white napkins with little black touches, heirloom wine glasses and silver plated cutlery, some small vases, Marimekko tealight holders and IKEA plates. 

An interesting mix of old and new - newly bought or handed down from older generations.  

As a little finishing touch I made a very small bundle of pussy willow and tied it with some natural raffia. I placed it on the napkin next to the cutlery just as a little reminder that spring is soon here!

Below is the final table setting inspired by the theme 'White Flowers for the Table'. 

Easy, quick and simple - with the tealight and the flowers pulling it all together and bringing it to life.

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a fabulous floral Friday!

Titti over on HWIT BLOGG has also created her version of 'White Flowers for the Table'. So head over to her blog and see her interpretation. 

I will be back next week with more floral delights from Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

For more floral inspiration follow me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

Creative Ways with Flowers - # 2 - Colourful Tulips, Ranunculus and Anemones

I love colour - well, almost all colours - I particularly like all the pinks and purples and the blues and lilacs. I often keep a very tight colour palette - that I find easier to work with and I still find it a challenge to combine strong colours from different ends of the spectrum.    

Here I have worked on combining some deep purple and bright orange double tulips - with bright orange ranunculus as well as some extremely dark anemones - they are so dark they look almost black.

All the flowers have interesting textures and colour variation in the petals. I like the fluffy foliage on the anemones and the little green pointy tips of the tulip leaves. It all helps to give a lot of interest to the arrangement.

I have cut the stems very short. All the flowers sit just above the edge of the vase - giving it a low and compact shape - perfect for a dining table, coffee table or side table.

I have used my old favourite vase - the Savoy vase designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. This one is a mini one just 10 cm tall - but perfect for small, short and sweet little flower arrangements. 

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a lovely floral Wednesday!

Me and Titti from HWIT BLOGG will be back on Friday with another FLOWERS - all about early white spring flowers for your table.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

[Styling and Photography: © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

For more floral inspiration follow me on:

Instagram - https://instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/

Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

Tiny Blooms - # 24 - Pink Hyacinth

This series of blog posts - called 'Tiny Blooms' - are about small flower arrangements. Small - might be the size of the container or it could be the size of the flowers or the amount of stems. It can also be that the arrangement is minimal both in presentation and that it's simple, quick and easy to do. Apart from that there are no other strict rules - I'm allowing myself a lot of creative freedom!

I simply put some bright pink hyacinths in a vintage green glass vase. The vase was one of three that I found at my grandmothers when I cleared out her house. I love them and I'm so happy I found them up in a loft deep in a cupboard!

I use it to force hyacinth bulbs but mostly I use it as a vase. It is a perfect size, it holds the flowers well and in a colour that complements most flowers.

Quick, easy, colourful and seasonal - all the elements to make a lovely spring arrangement!

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a lovely floral Monday!

I'll be back later in the week with more floral delights from 

Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

[Styling and Photography: © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

You can also find me on:

Instagram - https://instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/

Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

Florets - Floral Quote - # 100 - by Shane Connolly

"Nothing epitomizes spring more than blossom. I love each and every variety as it comes into its own, but perhaps nothing is quite so uplifting as watching the first piece of single blossom slowly opening at home. Then you feel that spring is really on the way even if snow is falling outside."

~ Shane Connolly ~  

[Shane Connolly: florist and event designer, he designed the flowers for the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding in 2011, author of three books - A Year in Flowers, Table Flowers and The Language of Flowers.]

[Quote from: A Year in Flowers (2012).]

[Flowers: Prunus branches with pink spring blossom.]

[Styling and photography © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a fabulous floral Sunday!

I will be back next week with more floral delights from Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

You can also find me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

A Bunch for the Weekend - # 71 - Scented Stock and Spray Carnations

This week on 'A Bunch for the Weekend' I'm featuring some scented stock flowers and spray carnations.

The stock is a mix of three pink and purple colours and when you buy it it has the charming name of Rainbow Stock on the label.

The spray carnations also come as a mixed bunch of three different pink colours. I only used two in this instance - I thought the third pink clashed with the other pink as it had too much orange in it - so I left it out. 

I made the bunch to bring to a dinner party - so I wanted to make a hand-tied and wrapped bouquet.

I bought the flowers the day before  and after conditioning I left them outside during the day. I brought them inside at night as I didn't want to risk any frost damage.

A hand-tied bunch is a way of assembling the flowers into a bunch by holding the flowers in one hand and adding flowers with the other hand - one by one. When adding you add each flower at an angle crossing the other stems - so that the stem create a spiral and the stems at the bottom will splay out. You also need to turn the bunch every so often to make a varied and harmonious bouquet. 

Once you have added all the flowers you need to tie the bunch at the binding point - the point where you crossed the stems. I like to use raffia - it's a natural product and it always looks nice.

Did that sound difficult and complicated? Well, it takes a bit of practice and like riding a bike - once you know how to do it - that's it - you are off!

As I was giving the bouquet away I wanted to wrap the flowers. I used two different coloured tissue paper - close to the colours of the flowers - and some clear cellophane with little white dots. I folded the paper at an angle so that two corners of each piece of paper created two points at the top. Place all the different layers of paper - with the tissue paper inside the cellophane on a table and place the bouquet in the middle. From the binding-point start wrapping all the layers of paper around the bouquet - a bit of scrunching is necessary and secure with adhesive tape. 

As a finishing touch add a pretty ribbon and you are ready to go!

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a fabulous floral Friday and a great weekend!

I will be back on Sunday with another Florets - a floral quote by someone who has a passion for flowers.

Ingrid 

~ xoxo ~

[Ribbon from Jane Means' Ribbon Collection.]

[Styling and Photography: © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

You can also find me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

Creative Ways with Flowers - # 1 - Orange Flowers

Orange flowers is not everybody's favourite - and more often than not it's simply because a lot of people don't like the colour orange. 

Well, I quite like orange but I have to admit that it's not an easy colour to combine with other colours. The way a vase with orange flowers is so intense in colour that it almost jumps out at you. 

At the flower stall I found one of my favourite orange tulips and a mixed bunch of orange ranunculus ranging from an orange red to almost yellow.   

Orange is the hottest colour in the spectrum and it can be an intense and challenging colour to work with. So what I have done in most of my arrangements here - is that I have followed the colour-wheel and picked the complementary blue colour to contrast with the orange.  

For the first arrangement I have used a dark blue handmade glass vase - many years ago it was a wedding present from the glass blower herself. I made a loose arrangement with the orange tulips and the dark blue vase nicely complements the flowers. 

For the second arrangement I have used a pastel blue vintage jug from the 1930's. It's a little bit more of a challenging and unusual light blue colour that I'm using here to complement the orange ranunculus.

In the third I'm featuring a Swedish hand-blown glass bowl by Bertil Vallien. The tulip stems are cut very short and sits neatly upright next to each other in the bowl. 

For the last arrangement I had to cheat - I simply couldn't find a blue vase anywhere that would fit this mixed hand-tied bunch I made of the tulips and the ranunculus - so I used a vintage cut glass vase. But it ended up being the perfect size as well as nice and neutral. So it all had a happy ending!  

Enjoy your flower arranging and have a fabulous floral Wednesday!

I'll be back later in the week with more floral delights from 

Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~ 

[Styling and Photography © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

You can also find me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

Floral Media - Floral Spring Centrepiece by Sarah Raven

Here is another brilliant video by Sarah Raven where she is making a spring centerpiece using a grid to help the flowers stay in position in the bowl. It will work for a big dining table, coffee table or hall table. She gives very good instruction on how to do it in the video - so I feel there is no need for me to repeat by writing it all down in the blog post. 

I love sharing these videos in case you have not seen them before - so watch the video and try to make your own! 

Here is a little bit about Sarah in case you have missed my previous posts with her videos:

Sarah Raven is well known in the UK for presenting gardening programs on television, writing lots of books about gardening and plants, teaching floral workshops and flower arranging courses, giving talks and demonstrations and also for being an enormously successful business women running a plant, seed and gardening internet business.

Have a Great Floral Day and enjoy your flower arranging!

I will be back later in the week with more floral delights from Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~

You can also find me on:

Instagram - https://instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/

Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson

FLOWERS by ingrid and titti - Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm celebrating Valentine's Day with three floral arrangements - a big mixed bouquet with two different tulips, ranunculus and cherry blossoms. A small arrangement with some rather special and very unusual pink tulips and a tall arrangement with just cherry blossoms on their own.

All three arrangements are just right for Valentine's Day - soft, feminine, pretty and romantic! 

The background in the photographs is a painting that I took off the wall, propped it up behind the flower arrangements and in the process I turned it sideways. I liked the contrast but also how some colours were matching - but I'm not sure the artist would be pleased with me turning her painting around!

The small arrangement with the very pretty pink and white tulips is quick and easy. The stems are cut very short and put in a small container in a contrasting colour. Cut the stems at slightly different lengths so they splay out a bit and don't end up standing straight up. 

Double tulips also called peony tulips are so stunningly beautiful - they almost take your breath away. 


One of my favorites is a pink one called Angelique others with great names are Lilac Perfection, May Wonder, Carnaval de Nice and there is a white one called Mount Tacoma.  

This spring try to find some branches with flowering blossoms. Bring them indoors - help them along by making two cuts at the bottom of the stems - one sharp diagonal and one vertical up the stem. This is to allow as much water as possible to be absorbed and help the buds to open.

If the buds are tightly closed you can help them along to open up by putting them in warm water and in a bright but not too hot place.
Cherry blossoms can be a bit tricky - the flowers are fragile and will quite easily fall apart if knocked by mistake - but once you have arranged them and they have happily started to open their flowers are just stunning. 

Oh, the delights of spring and the wonders of nature. 

Enjoy your flower arranging! 
   

My Swedish collaborator Titti Malmberg over on HWIT BLOGG is also celebrating Valentine's Day - so go over and have a look at her interpretation.

Have a fabulously Happy Valentine's Day! - and I will see you next week with more floral delights from Of Spring and Summer.

Ingrid

~ xoxo ~ 

[Styling and Photography © Ingrid Henningsson/Of Spring and Summer.]

You can also find me on:

Pinterest:   https://www.pinterest.com/ofspringsummer/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ofspringandsummer/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingrid.henningsson