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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Wreath Making

My garden club met last night for our annual wreath making. Trust Florist and Nursery in Pulaski, NY is very generous to our club and opened their workshop for us after hours. For a very nominal fee they provided the frames and a selection of our greens along with the use of their machines that make assembly a snap. Of course I brought my camera along to document how it's done.

They have two work tables. It goes quicker if you work in pairs, with one person gathering and cutting clumps of greens and fanning them a bit and the other person placing them in the form and crimping the wire.

Thus is a closeup of the wire frame and if you look closely you can see how it is set in the crimping tool.

You need to work carefully to keep your fingers clear of the crimper!



When you have a clump of greens laid the way you want them you step on the floor pedal to crimp the wire.

A few decorative touches and voila!

They had this wreath hanging in the shop. (The flash really messed up the colors.) It was done with hens and chicks or some type of sempervivum. It would never have occurred to me to make this type of wreath and I have no idea how it was assembled but it was much prettier than the picture.
Click to Enlarge

4 comments:

  1. Wowow! Such beautiful wreaths! Looks like fun. Does your club sell them or do you make them for yourselves?

    I love your template colors. :)

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  2. e just each make one for ourselves. The club used to make them at the church where we hold our regular meetings. We made a mess and having to wire the greens on the frame was so much harder.

    Thanks for the compliment! The purple was way past due for a change.

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  3. The finished wreath looks very pretty. We have friends who sell wreaths at Christmas and once I watched as Claudia made one. They have that crimping tool..it's handy! She said the rough and prickly greens really mess up hands though.
    Nice or the nursery to let you use their facilities!
    The sempervivum wreath is really unusual. I wonder how they put it together. Doesn't seem like the plants have much stem...but I haven't had any experience with them, so just guessing.

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  4. That's really cool, Apple, I guess I had no idea there was a crimping tool to make the job easier. Err, I'd have had my gardening gloves on!

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