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

How To Make A Maneki Neko/Welcome Cat Vase Arrangement

A very good Japanese friend gave me a great gift....

It is a Maneki Neko, or a Welcome Cat......

It is used in many stores in Japan to welcome customers and as a sign of good luck....

Anything symbolizing good luck and hospitality is wonderful to incorporate into a floral offering.

In addition, cats in The United States are one of the most popular pets with whom we love to share our homes. That alone would suggest that floral art incorporating cat images and symbols would make a wonderful gift....

So I thought it would be fun to stylize this lucky little arrangement!!!

What You Will Need

Let's start this design by placing foam into the container.

We start our flower placement by putting a line of flowers on the left side of this design. We had some buds left over from another design...They are spikey in effect (eg. from monkshood,or delphinium, etc.)

Add some lily blossoms in front of the spike buds and down towards the base of the design.

The mechanics of the design are covered with moss.

To create greater height on the left side of the design, we add liatris as shown in the photograph.

The line of liatris is rather short.................

So let's add another flower to raise it up a little higher...........

The welcome cat is secured towards the right side of the design.

A section of roses is added as shown in the photograph.

You can see that this design is very easy to do. In addition to the novelty factor of the cat, this is also a fairly big design, so it will most definitely be noticed.

If you don't have a cat like the one shown in the photo, consider using stuffed toy substitutions. There are great cats in comics that could be adapted quite nicely here.

Contents can be varied to come up with an enormous assortment of possibilities. Consider picking randomly one of each from Numbers I, II and III below:

I. For example in place of liatris and the spike flower buds consider substituting: gladiolus, miniature glads, larkspur, delphinium, forsythia branches, curly willow, ting ting, rib cycas leaves, heliconia, pussy willow, eremurus, bells of ireland.

II. In place of the lilies consider substituting: sunflowers, daffodils, carnations, fujis, anthurium, gerbera, godetia, orchids.

III. In place of the roses, consider substituting: gerbera, miniature carnations, spray roses, cornflower, miniature glads, bird of paradise, bouvardia, alstroemeria, nerines, pincushion protea.

Play with these combinations, and you have literally hundreds of designs from this one lesson!!!!!!!!!!

We hope that you really enjoyed this brief floral design lesson. At Rittners Floral School 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!!