Valentine Weekend

Things are getting busy here.....today I delivered a thank you gift, 8 centerpieces, an orchid plant, and a bouquet.  I love the combination of peach and burgandy - there is something about the depth of a dark color and a light pastel that works so well....for these I used Finesse peach roses, Leonides rust colored roses, burgandy Safari Sunset, gardenia leaves, chocolate mini artichokes and some burgandy mums.

Valentine Nora

Valentine's Day at Restaurant Nora.  Every year we try to tweak the display a little and do something different within the budget etc.  We also try to reuse as many of her props as possible.  This year I wrapped her 3D puffy hearts with vintage ribbons and trims and put them in the garden room window box along with the Christmas amaryllis and some new red spray roses.  In addition I covered her large styrofoam hearts with pieces of a very graphic cutter quilt, this works with the decor of the restaurant which includes antique quilts and folk toys.

Photos from a wedding

While poking around on the internet today I found the web site of the photographer of the wedding of Rheagan and Jordy last April.  The pictures are just great and really show the look of their beautiful wedding (and our beautiful flowers!).  You can see the photos at her site:  www.kthompsonphotography.blogspot.com. 

Little red wagon part 2

So last week I made a cute arrangement in little red wagon that was a wintry collection of pine cones and twigs - apparently the client did not want a winter look but was more interested in a spring arrangement based on something that had been done before with wheat grass and gerbers.  It was too late to order wheat grass so we covered foam with moss and used lycopodeum for a feathery grass, put large gerbers into stem tubes and then water tubes and voila. 

Pretty cute.  I also loved the tiny wagons used as napkin holders. 

more weaving

I have been doing alot of weaving with different materials lately - and I made these leaves last week.

They are woven from varigated lily grass in a simple manner - tied off with wire - for a more polished presentation I would wind lily grass over the binding.   I like these - they would add another texture to a bouquet or arrangement that is unusual.

Boutonierre ideas

I am a fan of simple boutonierres.  I find that for the most part, our grooms and other members of the wedding parties want a clean looking piece.  I made this series of grass boutonierres the other day and think they can stand alone or they can be enhanced with a small flower and would be an interesting alternative to our usual single rose or calla.

Christmas mantle

Another mantle I decorated for Christmas.  I used silk and dried flowers and loved the combination of textures and colors.  Mantles are one of my favorite things to decorate - the parameters are clear and it is fun to layer  the elements.

Little red wagon

Today I have been working on a sample for a dinner next week.  The host is providing little red wagons - about 10 inches long - and they want a piece made of up cones and stuff kids might pick up outside. 

I decided that I would make a little wreath of cones, twigs, moss and some eucalyptus berries and see if this works for them.  I like the way it sits to one side and the vibrant red of the wagon works with the natural materials.

Volume

I am playing around with grasses in a linear manner to add volume to an arrangement and this piece (without flowers) is something I came up with today.  I love the regularity of the grasses and how they keep a nice organized woven shape on the top and in between the glass and the oasis wrapper.  I like the fact that is relates to basketry - a craft that I taught myself at my first college as a way of avoiding writing a paper (sorry anthropology dept. at Drew).  A  nice dome of a single flower would be fun in this piece or a multi color and form arrangement may work - that is the next step.  It actually should be the first step but I had to get the grass arrangement working first!

Topiaries for Nora

Today we delivered 4 little boxwood topiaries to Restaurant Nora for her upstairs Gallery dining room.  We used red twig dogwood stems and real boxwood in silver julep cups - they will slowly dry out and should look good for several months or more.  This year we have done more with boxwood than in previous years and learned a few tips. 

More experiments

I have a BFA in textile design from the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, NY.  We had too much fun during that time (my husband was there for furniture design).  I loved weaving and still hold on to my wonderful Macomber loom and yarn in hopes of getting back to things at some point.  For a long time I have been thinking about how to incorporate weaving into floral design and again, as a result of the work with Ruth (see the previous post), I have been trying some things out.  For this piece I wove a scaffolding of raffia all around a square glass vase tieing pieces together and making the random pattern of the knots part of the overall design.  I wanted to use a dramatic flower in this piece, one that was tropical since the raffia refers to that type of look,  so I got some white anthirium flowers and kept them low so there was a nice contrast between the smooth surface of the flowers and the rougher surface of the raffia.  I then wove some wire grass in leaving large loops in order to create some linear volume.  Again, just an experiment, but certainly fun.   Just like craft school. 

Experiments

My friend Ruth is a professor of design at UMD.  Next week she is going to speak to my floral design group, IFDA,  about a personal approach to design.  I have been playing around with some of he techniques she will be speaking about and will begin to post some of the arrangements I am coming up with.  Most of them are not fully realized works and may need some refinement - think of them as 3 dimensional sketches for the time being.

This first piece began with the purchase of this beautiful chunk of amethyst last week.  I wanted to use it as an integral part of an arrangement and was happy to get this large echevaria blossom in a great purple color.  I put the amethyst in the vase and propped the blossom on the top, added some smaller chunks of stone in the lower part of the vase and finally put some brunia in for more texture.  An interesting note - when Ruth saw this piece, she liked it but noted the water level and we raised it until it became a better part of the design as a whole.

Emily's wedding

Emily and Manus got married last night. The wedding was held at the Tabard Inn at Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. The Tabard is a wonderful hotel and restaurant with an eclectic vibe. I did the flowers and attended the wedding and did not take many pictures, but I did get a couple, one of Emily coming down the stairs to the ceremony with her parents and the other of the two flower girls. Emily's bouquet consisted of Vendela, Classy Cezanne and Ohara roses, white anemones and sweet peas from Japan. I made the girls' head wreaths of silk and beaded flowers. More pictures to come.

Christmas mantles

I love decorating mantles for the holidays. This year I used branches, velvet acorns, copper xmas balls, feathers and a rhinestone brooch as a focal point. I made it a point of using materials that I had on hand instead of buying anything new.

Christmas ikebana

This week at ikebana class we worked on some holiday pieces. I love this wooden container and thought it would be appropriate. We all used the highly twisted branches, and I added pine boughs, red berries and some double white callas.

Dinner party

Sodexo, a catering company, had a client dinner tonight. They rented wonderful citon colored gauzy tablecloths with sparkle and wanted a nice centerpiece to match. We made some arrangements with Limbo roses - a pretty yellowy green. We arranged them in half sphere, added a collar of green hypericum berrries and an additional collar of twigs to create a wreath effect. They sat on a square glass vase lined with moss. The colors worked wonderfully together.

Something a little different

This is a not great photo of a little piece I made yesterday. I bought these wonderful white vases at IKEA - the are round with a nickel sized hole in the top of each. I used three, attached the woven grass with an adhesive patch and added the dyed dendrobium orchids. I put them all on a white plate for easy delivery. Sort of fun and a little different for me.

Christmas 2010 at Nora's

Photos of this year's Christmas installation at Nora's along with some additional pieces we made this year. Again we used her red amaryllis along with pomegrantes, a real cedar swag, beaded garland and silvery eucalyptus. For the topiaries we used fresh boxwood and put golden poppy heads and pinecones and some Christmas balls in as well.

Thanksgiving at Landon

Last week's arrangements for a Landon pre-Thanksgiving party. I used Lenonides roses, orange pin cushions, magnolia leaves, large green cones and assorted brown, orange, yellow and burgandy mums and yellow statice and yarrow.

Delivery

A photo of the back of the Subaru filled with flowers for a Landon reunion dinner. We love this car - it can practically hold an entire wedding worth of arrangements.

Halloween ikebana

I have missed many of the ikebana classes this fall but wanted to post the picture of the piece I made around Halloween. We stacked gourds and pumpkins on spikes on a wooden base and added some berries and bittersweet vine to make a composition. It was fun to try this type of freestyle piece. I love the browning hosta leaves - there are so few times that a decaying piece of material is appropriate in an arrangement, but this is one of them!

Flowers for the Whittemore Mansion

This morning I made a large arrangement for a showing for event planners at the historic Whittemore Mansion, the home of the Women's Democratic Club and the Asia Society. It is a lovely place right off of Dupont Circle in the heart of Washington, DC and rented out for weddings and other events.

For this piece I used "Shocking" lilies - beautiful yellow petals with burgandy throats, peach roses, rose and pink Peegee hydrangeas and cream stock.

Sunday wedding

Stephanie and Ken got married yesterday at Woodend, the Audubon Society mansion in Maryland. They had an absolutely beautiful day. The ceremony was outside in a cedar grove with a backdrop of golden trees. The color scheme was lavender and lime - we added in many shades of those colors in order to give the flowers a lot of depth. The table arrangements were modestly priced but we had fun with them. We decorated the mantles of the mansion with lime green osage oranges, purple sprayed hydrangeas, mexican sage flowers, spider and other mums, and Cool Water roses. I loved her bouquet, we used dark purple callas, lavender and purple lisianthus, lime green roses with a little collar of varigated pittosporum.

Busy Week

We had a very busy week last week, lots of events, deliveries and a wedding on Sunday. These two photos are of the pieces we delivered. We used dyed orange callas, Robin Hood mini gerbers, grasses, chocolate weigela and Euphoria roses. I love the colors in these pieces.

Holton parties

These are photos from tonight's parties at Holton. Red apache rose nosegays surrounded by curled burgandy leaves - 3 nosegays in each arrangement with a few dark red sprays and someof the chocolate weigela foliage around the edges for the table arrangements. And a buffet piece of roses, dahlias, grasses.