Without any real effort on my part, I've managed to acquire silk flowers much faster than I can use them up—to the point that I finally started organizing them in boxes, as recommended by flower arranging book. I finally decided to take some time and acutally use some of my rather bedraggled treasures. In taking apart many incredibly ugly arrangements, I discovered some rather tatty vertical elements, painted blue. Horrors!

Yet these unlovely things, chipping paint, were perfect for my arrangement—even the delft blue color worked right into the blue, cream, gold/orange/brown color scheme. Usually, I crop a little more tightly, but I managed to frame the walnut table so neatly, and I liked the large expanses of negative space framing the flowers so well (very Oriental, that use of blank space) that I left it alone. I do rather wish I'd taken the time to make use of the settable white balance, but I hadn't become as comfortable with that feature as I am now. And the golden cast works reasonably well.

As I've mentioned a few times before, all the flaws disappear into the whole. It's very gratifying. This arrangement has the rather spare sensibility of Ikebana to me, but no doubt wishful thinking is coming into play.

But what better item than a gift to associate wishful thinking?

Silk flowers, painted dried vegetation, plastic beads, synthetic rope, plastic and fabric ribbon, hot glue

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.