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Rittners School Of Floral Design
In Boston Presents....

A Winter
Reindeer Novelty



Christmas dominates the winter season, and Christmas means many different things to many different people. For some it is the deep religious significance of the holiday. For others it means winter sports and frolic in the snow. For still others, the holiday season means making or buying gifts for friends and family. And for others still, Christmas means brotherhood and goodwill towards your fellow human being.

This is a wonderful design that is intended for the holiday season. Symbolically it gets in the motif of Rudolf the red nosed reindeer for Christmas. But this design really is appropriate for the entire season, for we associate reindeer with the outdoors and the winter season in general.

This design also demonstrates quite nicely how floral designers integrate all kinds of materials into their floral art. The contemporary florist carries stuffed animals, dried and silk items, balloons and many allied items besides flowers. Floral art can be enhanced by various allied items, and in turn, can be a vehicle by which one can give other gift items, in a much nicer manner. This design serves as a pleasant way to present a cute stuffed toy.....



What You Will Need

  • One half sheet, two inch thickness of Styrofoam
  • Balsam
  • Stuffed toy
  • Cones
  • Glass MM. Balls
  • Birch branches
  • Small clusters of dried materials
  • Jumbo Panchu Spring
  • Florist wire, picks,tape


  • We start by using one half sheet of 2" thickness styrofoam as our base. Use foliage to create a triangular shape. Start with a long piece of balsam. Place it in the center back of the base. Add shorter pieces to the left and right of that first piece of green. Additional pieces of foliage are placed flat on the base itself, and held in place with hairpins (small upside down U's constructed with heavy florist wire). The base itself becomes completely covered.

    To add our little deer, a piece of taped wire is placed around his waist, and it is wrapped around a pick. The pick in turn, is inserted right into the base. The deer is therefore sitting on the base, but is held firmly in place so s/he won't fall out until the recipient of the design wants to remove it.



    To make this design even more striking, and to add visual interest, let's use some of our branching materials. White birch branches add to the seasonal effect, and extend the height of this design quite easily.

    Panchu spring is the red dried material in the photograph. It looks very much like a bed spring. It is available in a number of different colors. In this design it is not only painted red, but also covered with glitter, to give a very glitzy effect. The panchu spring and the birch branches combine to give the design a rather wild, and less predictable effect. They give good contrast to the rather staid natural foliage.




    Add some of your glass ornaments. These are placed into clusters and tied together. Some of them are placed on picks and inserted to create height, as shown in the photo. The glass balls are placed on the left side of the design in clusters of three. One larger cluster is placed into the right side.

    A few cones are placed down on the baseline for visual stability and contrast of texture.

    Small red dried flowers are placed into bundles and tied with florist wire to picks. These are inserted throughout the design to add even more color.




    We hope that you really enjoyed this brief floral design lesson. At Rittners School of Floral Design in Boston we provide floral design instruction that includes a wide range of different styles and techniques. Please come and take one of our hands-on workshop programs!!



  • Rittners Floral Education Center returns you to our Floral Education Center.



    Your Webmaster is Dr. Steve Rittner, who may be reached at Stevrt@tiac.net. All photographs and text on this page are Copyright - Rittners School, and may not be reproduced, or used for any commercial purposes.

     

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