Palazzo Dreaming
by petal & pins
© Sandra Alcorn 2014
I’m joining Cathy from Rambling in the Garden for ‘In A Vase On Monday’ today.
The purple flowers I’ve used have randomly spread throughout the garden and perhaps someone can identify them for me.
© Sandra Alcorn 2014
© Sandra Alcorn 2014
I’ve chosen bottles I’ve repurposed as vases for today’s arrangements. The green one once contained puréed Italian tomatoes and the clear short one is a balsamic vinegar bottle so it seemed fitting to photograph them in front of my Venice window.
What is my Venice window you may ask?
When our neighbour built a deck that lessened our privacy through the end of our sunroom I came up with a more creative solution than curtains or a blind.
Mr Petal & Pins and I have a soft spot for Venice and its beautiful architecture so we went through our holiday pics and chose one of a window in Palazzo Pesaro Croce – The Galleria Internationale d’Arte Moderna. The proportions were a perfect fit for the window shape so we resized the image, got it printed and voila – our Venice window!
It still lets the light in and when lazing on the daybed at the other end of the sunroom we can make believe we’re in our own palazzo!
© Sandra Alcorn 2014
Petal & Pins 
Sandra, the flowers and greenery look lovely against your Venice window. What a cool idea! Hope someone can help ID your purple flowers.
Thank you!
The whole composition is lovely. The bottles are as pretty as any vase and I’m impressed with your resourcefulness in creating the Venice window.
Thanks Rickii!
Great idea for your window – it works so well! Well done both of you. Although the flower shape does of course look familiar as there are so many flowers like that, in bud it doesn’t look like anything i have come across that I can think of. Is it perennial or self seeding annual – and what about leaves? Or are these its leaves in the vase? They look great anyway, whatever they are, and your little blue extras look really sweet. Thanks for sharing.
They look like Scorzonera to me. Possibly Scorzonera deliciosa. They are very pretty.
Thanks Chloris I just googled that – you could be right or it could be salsify which apparently are edible – have you tried them?!
Beautiful arrangements – your repurposed bottles are perfect vases. I adore your Venice window, what a smart & clever solution. Now I want a Venice window!
Thanks Eliza!
The purples are adorable, but I’m interested in that window: “…so we resized the image, got it printed and voilà – our Venice window!” Got it printed where and on what? Is it vinyl? I have never seen that before but would like to do something similar for my sons’ bathroom. Thanks!
Hi Karen it is printed on vinyl just at my local print centre nothing fancy and it’s stuck to the glass with heavy duty double sided tape. You do see windows in shops and on buses that are printed film that adheres to the glass (like a transfer) which would probably give an even better result but that seemed a more complicated thing to track down where I live and possibly would be a more expensive project. We blew the image up on the home computer and took it to the print shop on a usb stick. Hope that helps!