Stocking flower - St. Valentine gift idea

A fairy statue alone - generic and boring, a fairy statue with a stocking flower made by you - personalized and interesting :)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself...

There were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and carnations, masses of carnations. There were roses; there were irises. Ah yes—so she breathed in the earthy garden sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, for kind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, this year, turning her head from side to side among the irises and roses and nodding tufts of lilac with her eyes half closed, snuffing in, after the street uproar, the delicious scent, the exquisite coolness. And then, opening her eyes, how fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked; and dark and prim the red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the sweet peas spreading in their bowls, tinged violet, snow white, pale—as if it were the evening and girls in muslin frocks came out to pick sweet peas and roses after the superb summer’s day, with its almost blue-black sky, its delphiniums, its carnations, its arum lilies was over; and it was the moment between six and seven when every flower—roses, carnations, irises, lilac— glows; white, violet, red, deep orange; every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds; and how she loved the grey-white moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses!

 I'm enormously grateful to Virginia Woolf for this passage. Great to know there are people who can feel like this and describe their their feelings in simple yet powerful words. I used to compare this passage to an impressionistic painting, but now when I reread it once again, I realize it's much superior.

Floral inspiration

Getting inspired when looking  through the photos of my garden in Ukraine. I'm so glad I took them before coming to India - the flowers "here" and "there" awaken completely different feelings.

Fabrics for stocking flowers

Choosing fabrics  is my favorite part of shopping for stocking flower materials - they come in a vast array of colors and it's so hard to limit yourself to buying just a few pieces :) When I lived in Ukraine, it was rather difficult to tolerate the grayness of the world around from November to March, but then I read somewhere about so called color therapy. The concept is to create something beautiful and full of color on your own. They recommended to buy a lot of watercolors or oil pains and try to express yourself by using them, even if you're really lousy at painting. And you know, it works.

Same applies to stocking flower making. Choosing fabrics for stocking flowers is extremely enjoyable and working on a floral composition that comes from your imagination gives you a very soothing and pacifying effect. 

Sometimes I buy stocking fabrics spontaneously, choosing whatever colors I like, sometimes I plan my purchases in advance and go to the shop with a clear idea of what I want - a pink fabric for roses, white and yellow - for my nylon plumeria, red - for hibiscus, orange - for tiger lilies and so on :)

Stocking flowers as wedding accessories

The quality of the photos is not the best, but I think they are still worth sharing. These wedding decorations - flower baskets, hair and hand decorations for the bridesmaids and buttonhole flowers for the best men  - were made by a person who first inspired me to try the whole flower making thing.

Blue and yellow stocking flowers

I always liked the combination of blue and yellow, so it was a pleasure to work on this stocking flower arrangement.

Where to get stocking flower materials in Navi Mumbai

Sometimes people contact me asking where to get stocking flower materials. Well, if you don't get them in your local craft store, there are lots of offers on eBay and AliExpress - you can fin everything there from green sticky tape and ready made leaves to stamens and stocking material for the petals.
As for me, I didn't have to do online shopping as I always manage to find everything I need at the local markets in Navi Mumbai. I just enter a shop selling all sorts of ribbons, buttons, lace and what not and ask them whether they have stocking flower materials. If they have- great! If they don't have, most probably they'll tell you where you can get everything you need to unleash your creativity :).

Here is the address of one of the shops in Navi Mumbai I visit from time to time:

Guru Krupa Nx
JN-1-51-B-3, Sector 9 (opposite Mini Market)
Vashi
Navi Mumbai 400703

They specialize in lace, buttons, wool and embroidery materials, craft materials and so on. 

Indian Style Stocking flower

A few weeks ago I made this stocking flowers using the colors of the Indian national flag - green, orange and white. I just thought it would be a nice little souvenir for one of my Indian friends on the Independence or Republic day.

The technique is the same as described in this post - How to make a stocking flower - step by step tutorial