Ruffled eucalyptus

Today I had coffee with my friend Loi who owns Tone on Tone, my favorite antique store in Bethesda.  Beautiful Swedish painted furniture mixed with pieces from Europe and fabulous accessories.   It is the most wonderful store to visit and very inspiring. 

I made this arrangement to take over - a tower of overlapping eucalyptus leaves inserted horizontally into a block of foam all the way to the top.    I put some poppy pods, nigella pods in between some of the layers on the sides and a nosegay of Vivienne white spray roses on the top.

I am happy to report that both Loi and his partner Tom, liked this piece and felt like it suited their aesthetic.  Since I a huge fan of theirs, I was thrilled.  

Hair accessory

I made this decorated hair comb for Jessica.  She is getting married next week and has in interest in vintage accessories.  I have a big collection of vintage hats and millinery flowers and rhinestone pins bought over the years at estate and yard sales.  I take them apart and reuse them for projects and this is the latest one.

Passementerie

Just French for fancy trim.  I am designing for a wedding in late Sept and looking for ways to glam things up a bit in an elegant way so I went out to Langley Park to Sarah Fabrics.  Sarah buys odd lots of fabric in NY and has wonderful taste and a truly international clientele.  I found these wonderful trims stashed away behind a counter and had to buy a bit of each one so I could try things out.  There are so many applications for these - decorations on bouquets, around vases, sashes for the bridal party, headbands, etc.

More experimentation

I am continuing to work with the tower of horsetail and came up with this woven grass piece projecting out from the front of the piece.  I like the detail of this idea and will work on some more ways to enhance it.

Ned's birthday

It was Ned's 60th birthday party last week at the National Women's Democratic Club.  I made the table arrangements and 2 large pieces that helped divide the large room into a more manageable space.  I used sunflowers and my own garden Peegee hydrangeas for the large pieces and a combination of white flowers for the centerpieces - white summer tulips, white lisianthus, varigated ivy and white peegees.  It was a pretty and cool look on a very hot summer night.

Experiments

Every summer I try to spend some time experimenting with new techniques and styles.  These pieces are my takes on the technique I learned from Jounni Seppanan in San Francisco.  I used horsetail pinned to a foam base with the pins forming part of the design.  I added in ferns and orchids and put the piece in a ceramic square with a mirror finish that works with the silver pin heads.  I love the background of the tower of horsetail - this is a versatile piece and many different types of flowers could be used - and I will be trying some more in the days to come.

Paper bunting

I really love working with paper, making crowns and bunting and stuff.  It is lots of fun and instant gratification.   I bought the central rosette at Michael's and added the music score cones and the lime green paper accents. 

I made this piece for my friend Becca who just had a baby boy and will send it off later today - hope she likes it.

Covered vase

One of the things I like most about going to the AIFD symposiums is seeing all the small details in the work.  I loved this vase covered with leaves.  The texture is beautiful and it would enhance any arrangement.  It would be fun to do this and see how the leaves would hold up over time.

AIFD workshop

After the AIFD conference in San Francisco was over, I stayed for a one day workshop with Finnish floral designer Jounni Seppanan.  His work is beautiful and very interesting.  We copied one piece of his in the morning - the piece with the arc of orchids overlaying a fan of roses on top of a tower of horsetail.  The mechanics of this piece were pretty interesting.  In the afternoon he had us bundle the ends of curly willow branches (about 30 pieces 10 inches long) with rubber bands and told us to make an arrangement.  His arrangement stood in a plastic plate and had a naturalistic arrangement of grasses and flowers coming from the top, I opted to wrap the bundle with an asplenium leaf and then to tuck a very few fabulous David Austin roses into the bundle of sticks.  Jounni liked this approach and I was pleased.

San Francisco Flower Market

One of the best parts of the AIFD Symposium was a trip to the flower market.  It was huge!  Over 80 vendors in a block long space.  The choice of products of all types was overwhelming.  I loved these lemons and oranges on stems. 

Floral jewelry

Last week I was at the AIFD 2011 symposium in San Francisco.  4 days of nothing but flowers, it was so great with lots of wonderful arrangements and floral objects to consider.  There were dinner parties on two nights, and for one of them we made floral jewelry to wear.  I made this necklace from layered smoke bush leaves under a shaped flat wire flower decorated with some chartreuse lichen and a flower bud.  The chain from is layered copper boullion wire.  It was light and easy to wear.

Sara and Todd

More pictures from the wedding.  The venue was the French Embassy, close to Georgetown.  The space is light and airy and showcased the beautiful linens and the flowers nicely.  We made arrangements in large glass squares for the majority of the tables using blue hydrangea, apricot Cumbia roses, Majolica ivory spray roses, Dusty Miller greens and Jaguar Mokara orange orchids.  For 6 of the tables we used our large trumpet vases to hold "trees" of leafed out curly willow.  We started the curly willow 2 months ago and have coaxed it along.   Under the trees we sat 3 glass cones with smaller versions of the other arrangements.   We also tucked fresh cut herbs into these pieces.  The bride's family owns an herb farm in Virginia and supplied pounds of fresh cut herbs for our use. 

The escort table arrangement was a totally different type of piece.  The bride has a Swedish heritage and we celebrated that with a large arrangement of Queen Anne's Lace, cornflower, grasses, nigella, yarrow and ladies' mantle to create a large meadow effect.  It made for a nice entry into the more sophisticated area for the dinner. 

Sara's wedding weekend

This weekend we did the flowers for Sara and Todd's wedding.  These arrangements were for the rehearsal dinner held on the campus of Georgetown University.  The groom's father made the order and he wanted bright spring colors.  We used two shades of local blue hydrangea, lavender wax flower and golden roses.  We also tucked in as much rosemary and other herbs as possible.  More on the significance of the herbs in the next post.

Graduation week at Landon

These are some of the pieces we made for Landon in the last few days - the small arrangements and the long one were for an event last night - we used Cherry Brandy roses, Jaguar mokara orchids, orange callas and burgandy Safari Sunset leucodendrum.  The red and white pieces were repurposed from the pieces for made for the graduates' breakfast last Friday - they were used again on Sunday for a retirement dinner.   We used white alstromeria, white dahlias, white gerbers and red garden roses in these.

Graduation at Holton

This past week was graduation at Holton.  It was the hottest week - 102 on graduation day and it was a real test for the staying power of flowers.  We used Quick Dip, the new foam from Oasis - Maxi Life, and Crowning Glory spray and I am happy to say everything held up thru the day and looked pretty good; even the pieces in the direct sun.  This year the girls carried peach Versilia roses which were quite beautiful and looked good with every skin color according to the photographer.  The bridge decorators (we really should change that designation to the campus decorators now) used a rose that was a peachy yellow called Finesse in their pieces as well as beautiful delphinium and cream lilies.  The decorations were the among the nicest ever and the installation went smoothly thanks to the careful planning of the chairs. 

Maya Angelou was the speaker this year - it was a huge honor for her to come and brave the heat to be there.  She noticed and remarked on the flowers in her speech which made my day.

Kew Gardens

One last photos of growers from Chelsea

These are the last 2 photos of growers' plants I will post from Chelsea.  I saved the best for last in the photo of the delphiniums.  This plant is heart breaking to grow in our area and the vibrancy and size of these blooms was incredible.  The clematis was lovely as well and I have some ideas of getting some going in my garden now that we were successful in starting some across the street at my mother-in-law's house.

Toy Museum

I have walked my feet off in London this week and seen one wonderful thing after another.  The other morning we went to a toy museum.  The origin of the museum was a collection of lithographs of paper theaters and other printed materials for toys.  It was an absolutely charming place - tiny rooms in a building with parts from both the 17th and 18th centuries.  Crooked steps and low ceilings.  I took these photos of 2 of the dolls - one is Ophelia and the other a fashion doll. I collect old toys and dolls and this place was thrilling.

More Chelsea growers

This display at Chelsea was from Trinidad and Tobago - it was quite different than the other displays - very vibrant and products put out as they would be in a market setting.  Really pretty things.

Chelsea Flower Show

Last week I fulfilled a long held dream which was to go to the Chelsea Flower Show.  It was beyond what I expected and we spent 5 hours trying to take it all in.  It is a different animal from the Philadelphia Flower Show,  less flower arrangements and more gardens and growers and vendors.  I am going to post some of the pictures I took of the growers' stands.  They were the most amazing to me in many ways.  I think that most of the intent of the growers is to sell to the home gardener and it was just incredible to see what one could buy to plant.  I really loved their set ups too - especially the narcissus in the Wedgewood bowls.  You get the feeling this display has been the same for a long time.  From the top there are narcissus, sweet peas and allium and amaryllis.

Sissinghurst part 2

Yesterday at Sissinghurst I saw a poppy in a color that was so unusual.  It was a rusty mauve and just lovely.  Wish I could get my hands on some seed for these.

Sissinghurst

I am in London for a week and today Ruth and I went out to Sissinghurst garden, about an hour outside of the city.  Vita Sackville West and her husband, Harold Nicolson, made this garden, he made the plans and she did the work with very little help, according to the guides.  It is amazing, of course.  Her famous white garden was lovely but the rest of it was incredible as well.  Here are two photos from the top of the castle.  The property revived a walled castle - only parts of it were standing when Vita and Harold bought it in the 20s.  Worth a trip of course. 

Retirement dinner

This is the top of a piece we did for a buffet table at a retirement dinner tonight.  The client wanted a super bright cheerful vibe so we did a piece that harked back to the piece we did for my presentation at AIFD Southern in March.  We used flocked pink matsumoto branches, yellow orchids, yellow and red roses, yellow oncidium orchids and red gloriosa lilies with some feather ferns.  Bright and fun for people moving into another phase of their lives.

We are busy

This has been a busy week.  Today we made a large arrangement for an event at a private club downtown and delivered pieces to another event closer to home.  This is a photo of the first piece.   The event was a school reunion and we used the school colors as our palette:  grey/cream/red/gold.  We used red Tinto roses, gold Combo roses and cream Vendelas, as well as cream lisianthus, dusty miller and lambs ears, green wheat grass and saracena and red ti leaves and grevilla foliage.  The scale of the room is so large we needed a piece that was about 4 feet tall.

Dinner Party

Last night I did some work for a dinner party.  The client wanted mostly cream and white flowers so I used that color scheme with a twist.  I used cream Akito roses and white hydrangeas but added saracena, poppy pods and eucalyptus berries to add a lot of texture and a little bit of color to the mix.  I also layered grevilla foliage which had a brownish tint at the end.