Having never participated in a fundraiser before and wanting to learn how the whole process went, I had an opportunity to work with a sister garden club in Gettysburg. One whole week was given over to cutting and collecting greens. At the end of the week, all these cut branches were then unloaded from cars, trucks and trailers in piles and bags outside the community center where the workshops were being held the entire following week concluding with a one day sale event.
There were five work groups. One group was devoted to snipping the cuttings down to appropriate lengths for the “creatives” to work with and kept a constant supply coming to those people. A second group selected combinations of greens to make wreaths. Gettysburg owns a couple of wreath machines that take a specific wire form that will then be bent to hold everything neatly in place. A third group was building table top trees using cones of oasis. A fourth group had ceramic vases, mugs and large wax coated apples to decorate. And the fifth group was constructing swags. An unseen workforce labored at home to make Christmas edibles.
I was in the greenery cutting group and was kept VERY busy bringing in loads of items from outside, snipping and distributing throughout the day. Someone is Carroll Garden Club told me that these kind of fund raisers tend to bring members closer because they are working together, very hard, in a common cause. And you do learn a LOT. I plan to educate myself on the names of all these evergreens that were harvested for use because there was so much variety in colors and berries. So, everyone who was constructing could exert their individuality. Someone found a source for fresh magnolia leaves (with the brown backs) which were selling for outrageous prices for just one sprig last year. And the gold in some of the evergreens, the blue berries of cedars and red hollies–!!!
I was only there the first day of the workshop, so did not see the later decorators work on all the additions that would get hot glued or woven into all these creations to make them special. The decoration theme was “Williamsburg Style”.
The following pictures illustrate the efforts that went on Day One of the workshops.
-
- Heaps of greenery
-
- A combination of greens
-
- Making a wreath using machine
-
- Even with a machine, it takes time to make a wreath
-
- Magnolia leaves on a pile intended for swag making
-
- Base for a swag
-
- Building a table top tree
-
- A couple of basic trees
-
- Mugs and vases collected through the year
-
- Early stage of apple decoration
-
- Crafting at the table
