As floral artists, we are always looking at plant material and working out ways to use it. In fact, once I was in a competition where we had to put together an arrangement using only what had been discarded from our previous designs – anything from the waste bins! There were some marvellous designs from table centres to corsages but the best was learning that there is a use for everything.
Here is an easy way to use cherry stalks or small leaf stalks to make an added piece for your designs. The example uses small maple leaf stalks.
1. Gather together some stalks of roughly the same length and line them up parallel to one another.
2. With another stalk of the same thickness and length weave under and over the base stalks.
3. Continue this pattern until you have a neat mesh shape. It can be fiddly to keep the stalks in place, so taping down one end might make it more secure.
4. Now you have a plant based embellishment for your design. You could glue the structure in a few places and hang these in a design as well. Or it can be made in a much tighter weave for wrapping around a test tube.
