Judy Leesburg Tablescapes

Judy Leesburg is an award-winning tablescape designer that specializes in teaching people how to create beautiful yet simple tablescapes using ordinary household items, nature and those vases from your grandmother's house. Judy simplifies the design process and shows people how to create harmonious and elaborate looking tablescapes in less than 20 minutes!

That's something the designer has been doing since she was three, when she cut flowers from her grandmother's garden and began arranging and displaying them all over the house in her hometown of Indianola, Miss. By the time she was in elementary school, she was creating hats and capes with straight pins out of 2 1/2 foot leaves from Castor bean plants, which grew all over the Delta of Mississippi. As an only child in a small town of 1,200 people, mostly adults, she spent much of her time reading, talking with grownups, and creating her own world of stories using art.

At Judson College in Marion, Ala., she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970 in theater, and studied under Dorothy Davis, a beloved professor who worked for years as an assistant to a Broadway producer and with Cecil B. DeMille, making sure all aspects of the theater were running right. Professor Davis taught students how to mix paints to get the desired colors, how to design with light, and how to create a set from scratch. Judy would later use these skills when she directed musical theater in Birmingham and dinner theatre on military bases where she was stationed with her then husband. When she first married there was little money, so she decorated on a miniscule budget. Her friends were amazed at the beauty of her home, and slowly, by word of mouth, she began decorating people's homes, and created a career out of it that has lasted 27 years.

A six-year student of the Sogetsu school of Ikebana-the ancient art of Japanese flower arranging-Judy bases her arrangements on nature. In addition to using flowers, Ikebana uses ordinary plants easily found outside, such as seeds, berries, twigs and branches. Unlike Western flower arranging that stresses symmetry, Ikebana embraces dissymmetry: A leaf that is crumpled would be preferable to a perfectly smooth green leaf. Because in nature everything is unique, and things are not symmetrical and picture perfect; nature comes in all shapes, forms and sizes. Another difference between the two art forms is that flower arrangements are usually made to beautify a space. Ikebana does that and it tells stories. An Ikebana tablescape sets the mood for what is to come, like the story of a wedding, of a new season, or of a time in a person's life.

When demonstrating how to create tablescapes, Judy advises people not to buy expensive floral arrangements or table decorations, because there are so many things that people can use that they already own. She teaches people to use an artist's eye to think how an ordinary household item can add beauty to a table arrangement. For example, she often uses the cap of a hairspray can to create landscape scenes.

Each tablescape should have a theme that draws focus and meaning to the work. For example, to celebrate the spring season, she might feature wildflowers, fruits, green leaves and personal items like crystal butterflies to represent rejuvenation. She uses focal plants in three different sizes in height and width, to create a sense of harmony. Subsidiary items like wild berries, grasses, vines, rocks, stones and moss usually flank the main pieces.

Judy has been teaching the art of tablescaping to thousands of people for the past 18 years. A sought-after designer and speaker throughout the South, she has won numerous tablescape competitions, been featured in national magazines and is currently writing a how-to book on tablescapes to demonstrate the making of tablescapes for a variety of events.