I got the idea for this year's early. I chose An Island Garden by Celia Thaxter. After visiting her recreated garden at Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire with the Newburyport Hort a few years ago, I read her book and books about her which I shared in this post.
I knew I wanted a row of individual flowers in simple glass vases since she described arranging flowers that way on a mantle. I also knew I wanted to write a quote from the book.
For the vases, I found tall, straight shot glasses online. My first thought was to have paper somehow wrapped around them. This little birthday arrangement for a friend was a test.
After contemplating the logistics of the paper and the glasses and a way to have them transportable, I decided it would be better to have the writing flat and mount the glasses on binder's board covered with paper. I ended up liking the simplicity very much.
I did the writing with a Speedball C-4 and sumi ink and made no guidelines. After I wrote out the quote, I noticed a slight rise to the right. To counteract that, I added a flourish to the E that started the passage. It looked awkward because it was a bolder and darker line than anywhere else. I then randomly darkened parts of other letters to achieve some balance. I rather like it and may experiment with it in the future.
The flowers came from Beach Plum Too in Newburyport. I purchased them on Wednesday and particularly loved how beautifully the ranunculus opened.
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