Every year I can’t help noticing how the flowers on our school run always come out in the same colour order. Have you noticed? After the white of the snowdrops, it shifts to celandines and their glorious yellow, like little suns clustered under the hedgerow. Soon we notice the yellow primroses, daffodils and early dandelions, keeping them company.
Next up are the blues and purples. Bluebells, lilacs, crocuses, grape hyacinths and wild violets, before shifting up a gear for summer, with red and pink added to the mix. To me, this time of year is all about yellow and purple.
When I was invited to take part in the Easter Wreath competition run by Country Baskets, I knew my colour scheme. It had to follow the colours of nature for this time of year. So here’s how we made it.
Components used:
One Artificial Spring Mixed Bush 45cm
One Fluffy Spring Chicken
One Woven heart 36cm
One Sandra Rich Porcelain Message Hanger
One Easter Egg Garland Yellow
A reel of Wire Reel Galvanised 0.32mm
1m of Double Sided Lemon Ribbon 10mm
1m of Satin Sided Purple Ribbon 10mm
Tools:
Wire cutters
Scissors
chalk
one enthusiastic 10 year old (optional)
This wreath is very easy to make. My 10 year old kindly modelled the process for me, although we did balance out the flowers together.
The Easter Wreath Construction steps:
1. The easter egg garland is wired. This makes it incredibly easy to anchor it to the wreath. We then weaved the garland in and out of the wreath, rearranging the eggs to ensure that they were some eggs inside and outside the heart shape. Anchoring the end. This fitted perfectly around the wreath.
2. Next up, we used wire cutters to shorten the stems of the Spring flower spray, to about 8-10cm. Some flowers could be slipped off the wire stem. The woven heart has plenty of places to thread the flowers in and hold them securely. Also the easter egg garland can be used to hold the flower stems tight. The extra wire tendrils help with anchoring them to the wreath.
3. I used seven of the purple tulips. No exact science here as we roughly spaced them around the wreath.
4. Next up were the larger yellow flowers. I used the smaller white flowers to fill the gaps, but not completely, as I liked the woven strips of the heart and didn’t want to cover it up. Looking at the hedgerows, the flowers cluster, stand alone or are absent, so I wanted my wreath to hint how nature really grows.
5. Next the chick needed adding. I used two 30cm strips of the wire to wrap around each of the chick’s feet several times, leaving a long enough length to wrap around the bottom of the heart.
(I didn’t use the forsythia stem, as I couldn’t bring myself to cut it up!)
6. I cut both lengths of ribbon into three equal lengths (6 pieces) and tied them around the message hanger twine. So they could dangle in the wind. Reminds me the streamers for the maypole on May Day.
7. Using the chalk, I wrote “Easter” on the chalk board and hung it around the chick. If I was hanging the wreath outside, I wanted to easily be able to remove it, as its made of porcelain. Away from the wind, I like the addition of the word.
8. Last but not least, tie a lovely bow with the ribbon that comes with the heart wreath, to hang it up. Not like my bow, which appears to have disintegrated before it reached the door. (how did I not notice?)
The finished wreath came out as less than £30. I have hung it on our inner door, away from the elements. It makes me smile every time I come home.
I’ve not used artificial flowers before. Previous encounters have been dusty, fraying ones in B&Bs and cafes. I was pleasantly surprised. I got a few dimensions wrong when ordering.The eggs on the garland are bigger than I thought from the site and fortunately worked better with my intended design. The chick was larger than I expected, but that was probably down to me not reading the description properly.
We chose to put our wreath together outside in the garden, not far from where our early mining bees have their burrows. As I was setting up the camera, I noticed a few bees investigating the flowers. For a moment, fooled by them. What more can I say?
Disclaimer: I was given a £30 Country Baskets voucher to buy the materials to make the wreath, in order to take part in the competition. All the materials were sourced from Country Baskets, if you would like to make your own wreath. All my views are my own and unbiased.
