How did I get on at Chorley Flower Show??? 2 firsts!!!!!

Hi Everyone, back in April, I told you that I was entering Chorely Flower Show.  I have now been, mage my designs on Staging Day at the venue and have my results.

Competition 1 - 'door decor' - includes door wreatha and door hangings, but no material was allowed on the floors or outside the frame.

I chose to make a very rustic country style door wreath in tints, tines and shades of the yellow colour hue as the title was 'creativity and use of coloure'.  Judge Jonathan Moseley said  'Confratulations, a riot of colour and style. A Beautifull design. '

Competition 2 - looking forward / 5 flowers plus foliage allowed

I toyed with 2 ideas for this one - ultra modern ikebana style or natural.  I ordered a gorgeous ceramic ikenbana style bowl from the wholesalers and on my way to show my friend it dropped and smashed! - I took this as a sign to go more natural and I had the ideal bowl in mind. One I always had my eye on in college, so off I went to college to ask my ex tutor/now friend, if I could borrow it. Of course I could - with 1 priviso.......BRING IT BACK!! 

So with my favourite bowl as a base, I set about looking for the ideal flower (as all 5 had to be same variety). Whilst I love Alliums and they would have been my choice for the ikebana style, Sunflowers were always going to feature in my plans for this bowl - but which variety?? Sunflowers are not just large yellow petalled black head flowers - there are so many different varieties and to bring out both the pink tone and the gold trim of the bowl I chose 'Marley'. Now to chose the foliage. 

If you're ever doing competition work judged by NAFAS then a godsend is there little blue rulebook. So I read the section on foliage and noticed it included bracts - fantastic as 1 of my all time favs is Bells of Ireland/Mollucellar however, I was unsure if this would class as a flower rather than foliage - quick double check confirmed that it is in fact a bract.

Great - now I had my favourite bowl, favourite sunflower variety and favourite bract and the arrangement looked good but was lacking the wow factor. That's when I thought what is missing? what do I need?  and it was contrast - I needed something really dark to balance the Sunflowers and Bells of Ireland - being a true foliage girl at heart - I used 2 differing dark foliages as I'm also a great fan of lots of textures in my work.

I was surprised to get 1st place with my design as I loved the Mystic Allium design a fellow competitor had made, but apparently the judges chose mine saying 'Congratulations, A stunning design'. I couldn't believe it and was over the moon.

However, the best was yet to come........

Apparently the public had loved my design too and voted it the People's Choice out of all the exhibits made - what an absolute honour.....  Thank you so much to everyone who voted for me x