My Creative Workbook

Christine de Beer - effortless floral craftsman

Too Hot!

Too Hot! floral art design

Sometime

Sunflowers

too hot

Leaning sunflowers

the eye

Sunshine yellow sunflowers

of heaven

Leaning flower stems in a shallow container

shines

From Sonnet 18, or Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? By William Shakespeare

Every week I add a new design with related tutorials. Be sure to subscribe to receive an email notification with design inspiration.

Tutorials

27 July 2016 Leaning Sunflowers to stay just so

The trick to any freestanding design is to get your first three stems standing stable and secure in the water. Once you have that you can build the design around it.

7 September 2012 The Three legged trick for Upright Constructions

When in doubt, always give your armature three legs. Two legs are simply not enough and four legs will wobble if it is even slightly off balance.

13 August 2014 Standing flowering stems in shallow puddles

Making a truss out of sunflower stems for a free standing design

13 August 2014 Sunflower Disk Floret

Gently pull the petals ( Ray floret) from the seeded part of the sunflower

25 February 2015 Balancing a Twirled Willow Armature

Twirl twigs to create a balanced nest to display the beautiful orchids on

20 April 2016 Free standing Willow twig armature with a hidden water source

Cut a few willow twigs to split to create legs for the armature

19 October 2011 Hana-Kubari chopsticks

Splitting the chopsticks or a wooden branch, such as a willow twig creates a natural (and glue-less!) clamp.

Favourite Flowers

Related Designs

8 November 2017 Psithurism

Craft a three tiered, dried autumn leaf armature

3 January 2018 Happy Coincidence!

Some designs really do just make themselves. I received this tiny vase for Christmas from Marius (thank you, Marius!) and while cleaning out my design room I found this little...

17 January 2018 Flowering Between a Rock and a Hard place

Create a subtle contrast by floating or anchoring some of your design elements.

28 February 2018 March Days

Line up a few frosted twigs to march across a shallow container

1 August 2018 Stay Cool!

Craft a free standing Sweat pea design

5 June 2019 Add up!

Stacking green stems to create an armature for short stemmed flowers.

31 July 2019 Jitters!

Zig-zag grass details add a bit of tension to the design

30 October 2019 There once was a bat called Tequila, a Halloween story

An all plant zero waste, levitating, twig (with just a splatter of autumn leaves, a breath of spiderweb and float of roots) Halloween decoration with an eerie bat skeleton made...

14 July 2021 Light as a Kite

Spike a wire frame into a disk floret for a light summer design.

11 September 2024 More! More!! More!!!

Adding more to an autumn design... but leaving everything out that you don't need.

6 September 2011 When Autumn Fall

Autumn leaf composite flower

29 September 2011 Pick-Up Sticks

A twig and stick design with sweet dumpling pumpkins and rosary vine (Ceropegia woodii). I also made a cherry twig and skeleton leaf Stick Insect

7 September 2012 Just Right! Floral Art demonstration: Own It!

My fourth design in my demonstration at the BC Floral Art Society meeting

13 August 2014 A leg to stand on

Create a upright design by supporting the flowering stems

25 February 2015 Just So

Twirl a few willow twigs to create a balanced armature to display orchids

10 June 2015 Gotcha!

Hana Kubari lily stems

20 April 2016 That Will Be

Freestanding willow twig armature design