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

A Winter
Snowman Novelty

As floral designers we especially enjoy the flow of the seasons. Summer, winter, fall and spring all come with their very distinctive holidays and symbolic associations. Living in the Northeast part of the U.S. we automatically think of snow and enjoying winter sports here in New England. So it should come as little surprise that these kind of motifs will show up in our floral art.

The style of floral design that you see here is called a "unit design." A unit design is the floral equivalent of a photograph. It is a three dimensional representation of a scene, that could be realistic or fantasy.

This unit design of a snowman, is both easy and fun to make.

What You Will Need

Start this design by preparing your base. Cut a sheet of 2" thickness styrofoam in half and smooth the edges. Pin ribbon around the base. Add a few bows on the corners.

Create a background in the design using your foliage. Balsam is placed directly into the styrofoam in the back of the design. Notice how we used a taller piece in the center and gradually shorter pieces on the left and right sides. The overall effect is somewhat triangular in effect. Some pieces of birch branches are placed into the styrofoam directly in front of the foliage. These branches create the feeling of greater height. Tie cones with #20 wire. Tape them and place them into the styrofoam at the front of the design. Similarly, take glass mm ornament balls. Assemble them into clusters, add picks to them and pick them into the base.

Our little snowman is easy to make. Take two styrofoam balls and pick them together. Pipecleaners of different colors are used to create the features. A little maline or other ribbon can be used to create the scarf. A small cap is formed from the top of a spray paint can. (or any other bottle cap). The snowman is attached to the base with picks.

Three balloon flowers are added into the center of the design. These are made by stretching 5" balloons over frames of heavy florist wire.They provide a very unusual texture and presence to the center of the unit. If you don't want to bother making flowers from balloons, silk flowers or dried flowers would work just as well.

We could stop at the last point, but lets add a little more color to our design.

Take small dried flowers and put them together in clusters. Add picks to each cluster and pick into the base as shown in the photograph.

The overall result is a very cheerful floral design, one that is a bit unusual. This design could be used in an entry hall, on a reception counter or even in ones window. Although we used a snowman here to create the winter motif, any stuffed animal could be placed here as well. This design would appeal to both the young and the young at heart

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!!