Winter Cool

With  Thanksgiving gone I wanted to switch gears and move the website toward the upcoming winter season....some Christmas designs have already been added for the early planners but i feel it is a little early for all the ornaments and the santas and the festive red and white vases. I wanted to add some designs that were a subtle appreciation of both the colors and the scents of winter but would also be good and appropriate for a variety of occasions from anniversary to birthdays to my favorite "Just Because."

The first thing I chose were of course my greens, as they would shape the entire base of my arrangement, giving it texture and direction and set that wintery mood I was looking for. I chose a combination of evergreens to contrast with a more delicate dusty miller and kochia. 

The Kochia has the same silvery hue of dusty miller but has the textural element of seeded eucalyptus adding another dimension to the design. The cedar and the pine added that fresh wintery scent that only evergreens could give and gunny eucalyptus added another grayish green hue and the minty fragrance. 

White hypericum berries added another textural fun element and also helped pull in the ivory and the lavender of my focus flower: The kale.

I chose the kale simply because it is a little unusual, has a very delicate and versatile  color scheme and the most gorgeous petals. It also matched so well with two of my favorite roses: Ocean song roses and amnesia roses. 

Amnesia roses (pictured below) have this intriguing vintage feel to them with their outer petals ranging in tones from gray to green to a mauve to lavender. 

Lavender Lisianthus (pictured below) added a touch of delicacy and I wanted a touch more white in the composition so I chose polar star roses, I used 40 cm cut for the vase since I didn't need the length of stems and also this particular variety has a nice size bloom even at the shorter stage. 

And here is the final design, I chose a white glass vase to tie in all the colors and give the arrangement an extra boost of light, and also to hide the stem work inside which is never quite pretty :o)