How I Made a Floral Musical Note!

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You may have seen my photograph of a Floral Musical Note – Drc asked if I could write a blog about how I made it, so I’ve taken some additional pictures to help use as illustrations. So here goes…

My instruction was to make a musical note using fresh flowers. There are actual florist frames available to make the notes with, but I decided to do something a little bit different. I thought it would look more interesting if I created the notes to look as if they were on a musical score with a Treble Clef.

Firstly I drew up a template.

Then I had to think about how to make the Treble Clef. I wasn’t bad at drawing them at Junior School, but this had to be made freehand using black florist wire. I also checked the sizing using a music book in our piano stool (and no I don’t play)!

I then made the Treble Clef judging the size using the music lines I had drawn on the template.

My design measured 16 × 16 inches and I had to buy a large piece of Oasis foam. (This is the green foam that is soaked with water, the flowers are arranged in the foam, and it provides moisture to both flowers and foliage.) So it was OH to the rescue – he cut the foam to size for me, so I was left with a 16″×16″ square, which was soaked using the garden tap. (The picture below shows the piece already cut out)

Now comes the fun part… And time to start work! Using the template and a model knife I marked out the lines onto the foam and then the notes. The flowers used are called Double Basing Spray Chrysanthemum, the variety is called Zembler. It has fairly big flowers, and there are usually about 4 or 5 open flowers on a stem. It’s also white in colour, which is what I needed to make the design look like paper for the music score.

Without boring you all too much, firstly each flower has to be cut from the main flower stem. Then it’s cut again to the length required, before being placed into the wet oasis foam, keeping the flower heads in straight lines and gently butting the petals against one another. At the same time you also have to keep the flowers at exactly the same height! As I worked across I left a gap to add the musical notes last.
Using the template I added the black lines made of wire and also the Treble Clef.
The most trickiest but important part of the whole design was the black notes. The flowers were actually sprayed with a can of matt black Florists spray paint!

When I was totally happy with the notes, I then finished with the peach floral display. As it was a lovely sunny day (about 2 weeks ago now!) I took several photo’s before delivery!

I hate to think about how much time I spent on the preparations, but I think it took something like 3 hours to make up with the flowers – and I used around 300 flower heads!!!

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog!

• 12 Jun, 2012
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