Spring flower arrangements

I really like decorating with flowers: a simple bouquet dresses up a room and makes an ordinary supper feel like a celebration. I am lucky to have my IKEBANA course every 2 weeks - not only we get to learn the Japanese art but we also get to bring all the flowers back home. Sometimes I use them to practice my ikebana skills, other times I just make little bouquets and fill our place with colour.
You do not need to spend a lot of time or money to make pretty flower arrangements. Today I want to show you how I made simple arrangements for the beautiful spring days.

Here is what I've used: tiny light pink carnations, white statice, and some greenery.

I've also added a branch from our apple tree. It just started opening its tiny blossoms and they look and smell so fresh!

I could not resist taking pictures of the delicate flowers

which, by the way, pair up so nicely with carnations and statice.

OK, back to the arrangement, or should I say arrangementS since I decided to use 3 small oil/vinegar bottles. I tied neutral-coloured stings around the vases ... just for fun.  If your vessels are very different, strings help in adding a common theme.

First, I placed carnations:  I cut some of them shorter while leaving several long stems for visual interest.

I added just a couple of statice branches, and a little bit of greenery.  The tall apple branch was placed in the second tallest vase (once again - visual interest).

Tiny bouquets looked nice but I decided to experiment and added 2 young curly willow branches. Curly willow is one of my favorite material: thin curly (duh!) branches add a nice touch to pretty much any arrangement.  They are very flexible and much fun to work with!

Instead of one arrangement I got three!

Each of them works great on its own ...

and has its own "personality".

But they also look great together - tender, fresh, and perfect for spring.

You can use any small flowers and pretty much any greenery or branches for this type of arrangement.  Keep things interesting by cutting flowers to different lengths and making things "uneven" (do not put equal number of flowers or branches into each vase).  But most importantly, have fun and smell the flowers!

xxx
Anya