On my online workbook this week: springy, Spring, spring

Dear

This week's inspiration is a tiny bit of Spring.

My tip for you this week is about... well... making the tiniest spring without damaging the vine. For such a delicate design you want your spring to be delicate as well (or maybe you want to go dramatic, which is fine as well!?!) for my design though… I wanted something robust enough to carry weight but delicate enough not to overwhelm my first Aquilegia vulgaris flower that opened in my balcony garden.

Use a fresh vine to coil the spring from. Start with the thinnest support you have and test whether the vine will coil without splitting. In the first picture you can clearly see the support is too thin and the vine will split. Size up and try again. Ideally the vine should comfortably extend around without any pressure. The thinner the vine the smaller you will be able to coil the vine but also the more brittle the result. Vine tips can be coiled into a barely there spring but it will not be able to carry the weight of the flowers. The cut ends are far more robust and ideal for this kind of spring. Once the vine is coiled on the support and clipped into place you can adjust (picture 3) and space out the coils to get a neater spring.

Then when you add the vine to the flower (picture below in the snippet section) pay special attention to the way the vine coils. You should be able to simply slip the stem through the coil. If it is not following the angle of the stem, flip the spring around so that the coil spirals up in the opposite direction.

Enjoy!

Every good wish,

Christine