A few weekends ago, I went to the Country Living Christmas Fair in Islington, London. I’ve been before and really enjoyed it. It’s a great way to find unique stocking fillers and gain fresh inspiration for Christmas decorating.
This year the organisers of the event arranged for some workshops to be hosted in the lecture room and I went along to Cherry Menlove’s workshop on designing and making your own Christmas door wreath.
This is a picture of the wreath we were shown in progress. Cherry discussed how to dry out pomegranates in order to prepare them for the wreath. You need to leave at least 3 weeks which is why I’m posting this tutorial in November – you need to start now if you want to make one this year! Cherry advised the audience to make some small slits into the pomegranate and then leave it somewhere dry and warm (like an airing cupboard) so that the juice can begin to dry out from the pomegranate. You need to place the fruit onto a baking tray or trivet so that the air can circulate underneath and also place a plate or something similar under the fruits so that any extra juice that drips from the bottom can be caught.
Here’s Cherry in action listening to a audience member’s question after the tutorial had finished. You can see the demonstration wreath above too. Cherry used pink roses, dried ruby grapefruit, florist’s moss and colourful cabbages within the wreath. She fixed the pomegranates on with ribbon and used a glue gun also before placing the remaining flowers through the gaps in the wreath. You can also use florist’s wire to fix your fruit in place if you wish.
This is an image of a similar wreath from Cherry’s website. You can see the full tutorial on her blog which I recommend you check out. I’m going to start drying out my fruit this weekend – fancy joining me?
P.S: Apologies if you have a huge gap between the last image and this text. I have absolutely no idea why this is happening and can’t seem to fix it!
Images 1, 2 and 3 – Celebrate Creation, image 4 via Cherry Menlove
Claire Parkin Interior Design 