The sixth night class, handbags

This week was the sixth week of the night class I'm teaching in the shop. Its gone so quickly only two more to go. We have a brake next week as I'm off to the Chelsea flower show on Wednesday the 21st. There was a request from the class to show how to make a handbag from leaves and flowers. Somebody had seen them in a magazine.This magazine is The Flower Arranger and is a the quarterly magazine of the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies (NAFAS).It is full of all the latest floral events that have happened and are going to happen, latest trends and fashion, easy step by step arrangements and area news from the many clubs around the country. I belong to the Rotherham flower club, we meet on the first Wednesday of the month for twelve months. Each month we invite a demonstrator to come and demonstrate their talents on stage usually doing five or six designs. We have a raffle with a chance to win one of the arrangements, I have won a couple over the years. As a club we get asked to take part in flower festivals for church's and cathedrals and have done so over the years, the last one I helped with was the rotherham cathedral last year, it is usually to raise funds for the church and very popular. The last event I helped out with was at Chatsworth house in Derbyshire, I will write about it at a future date. To get back to the class night I designed three bags for the class to get inspiration from and I was very pleased with the results. Every one enjoyed this craft work and they were all different and used their imaginations, a good range of different designs. The photo's are the ones I made earlier in the week and by the time I took the photo's they look a bit tired, but for a week old not to bad. They were in the shop on display and I could have sold them many times.

This design used salal leaves which were then sprayed black.

After shaping the wet foam and lining from the bottom 3/4 up with clear cellophane the leaves were pined on from the top working down to the base. The handles were made from steel grass and could be bound with decorative wire. pearl headed pins were used in a decorative way to dress the bag and flowers were added to the top.