How to... make a Lavender Wand - Red Ted Art

Welcome back to this week’s how to.. Today I bring you “How to make Lavender Wands” – or Lavendelstäbe – another little left over from my (Germanic) “teen-hood”. I think I like the “lavender wand” name more – makes it sound all fairy like. I made two today and immediately they were “claimed” by Red Ted and his playdate. A scented wand each. Perfect.

You can make these sitting in the garden or on a garden wall whilst chatting to your friends.. all you need is a piece of ribbon and some lavender… and I did just that when our playdate arrived!

Materials: an UNeven number of lavender (I used 17), piece of ribbon (I used one about 75cm long)

This craft also cost me “nothing” – the ribbons where salvaged from presents… and the lavender came from our garden!

1. Pick your lavender as long as possible. It should also be quite fresh, so that you can bend the stalks without breaking them. Make sure you have an uneven number – 11 – 21 are good. I used 17. As you can see my lavender is quite scraggly. If you have nice thick bush, with thick stems, you can make these with as little as 9 stems! Tidy up the stems of any leaves of lavender.

2. Tie your ribbon below the lavender. then start folding over stem by stem – folding it over and under the ribbon – i.e. weaving it. The first 2-3 rows are a little fiddly, but it is ok if you make a mistake, just fix it the next row round. It doesn’t matter too much and you will find the more you make of these, the more “perfect” they come out!