Faded Beauty - Using Dried Materials

 Once, using dried materials from fields and gardens was a necessity in Ikebana (especially in winter time). Today, in our Sogetsu textbook, dried, bleached or colored materials can be arranged with fresh plants.

A winter storm will hit us again, accumulated snow will be from 6" to 12" until tomorrow morning. Our Ikebana class is canceled again. Ikebana International will hold a meeting this Thursday (1/23/2014). A workshop program is "Faded Beauty - Using Dried Materials". The I.I. meeting might be canceled too. It's extremely cold, single digit degree F.
Here is my arrangement using all dried materials:

The wood branch itself  is a beauty, like a piece of sculpture.
The colored seed pods , few dried leaves and a dried dahlia all arranged into
the ceramic vase. It is a "Faded Beauty".