On my online workbook this week: Doing a loop tangle twist

Dear

This week's inspiration is … a “if there are Autumn leaves out there already- it’s Autumn” attitude.

My tip for this week is more about the but “why”? Why do I thin out the beautiful clusters?

From a purely design perspective (there are many, many more reasons- don’t get me started) one of the greatest benefits of NOT choosing to use floral foam as a mechanic is so that you can avoid that heavy and depressing result you get when you use such a heavy and depressing mechanic. You get to keep the design veil light and transparent because you do not need to hide the ugly mechanics. This adds a minimal dimension and a level of uplifting lightness to your design. To exaggerate the effect it is best to groom the clusters.

Sedum is anyway one of those catch 22 design situations. If you use the stems early the flowers are not yet open. If you wait for most of the flowers to be open… you will always have a few faded cream coloured flowers in between.

My solution is to either use them in tight bud or to wait until most of the flowers are open and remove the cream coloured faded flowers. Tedious job? Not necessarily. An easy way to do this is to simply run your finger nail gently over the cluster and the faded flowers will drop off leaving you with a thinned cluster of fully opened sedum.

Enjoy!

Every good wish,

Christine