Novelty Christmas Scene

I have a fever.. and the cure? More Christmas!!

I had a blast making this "arrangement". You can't really call it a floral design so I call it my styrofoam village. Well, you can't really call it a village either, it's more like a styrofoam house set in a wintry scene. But, then again, the house isn't really made out of styrofoam, it's make out of floral foam..









































It was fun, don't judge!

Check out the example...

Boxwood Christmas tree

I was talking to someone about buying one of the pink tinsel miniature Christmas trees from Borders Books yesterday. They're small, pink, covered in glittery tinsel.. they're exactly what my room needs to feel festive. So when I saw that we were making a legit Christmas tree, I started to envision the possibilities and make a list of needed materials:
- multicolored tinsel
- glass balls of various sizes and colors
- mini picture frames
- bows, bows, and more bows
- did I say tinsel? well, I will need more

The examples where beautiful and looked effortless

If only they had more tinsel!

Too bad mine didn't live up to expectations.. It doesn't help that it fell face first onto the floor of the #1 bus on the way home. If I can't salvage this tree when I get back from NY then Borders here I come.

Christmas centerpice

I am terribly behind and I was determined to not blog out of order, but it's December and I'm so full of Christmas spirit I just cannot wait another second to post pictures of my Santa-filled centerpiece.
















Here is the other side... see the Santas peeking out? I have a theory that they're spies making naughty and nice lists. It might sound crazy, but I'm not taking any chances.
















For my flurry of catch-up, you can look forward to:
- A sympathy arrangement (a mom-covered cross that was hanging on the wall in our kitchen for about a week.. we're very pious in our house).
- A traditional cornucopia for Thanksgiving.
- The flowers for Andrea's awesome Thanksgiving dinner party... my first party!
- Various arrangements from my 'leftovers' and a topiary of Asiatic lilies that I love.

I'll leave you with a Ho Ho.. Ho
... I love Christmas.

Vase arrangement in H2O

I've been waiting forever to put away the floral foam and work with water arrangements. I love the natural, classic look of vase arrangements in water. Plus, as Dr. Steve pointed out, there is so much action going on underneath the water to see! I love the look of the crossed stems supporting each other, that is until the third day when it looks more like a swamp than a floral arrangment.




















There are a couple of things that I noticed when putting this arrangement together:
- I've lost a lot of control going from foam to water. I had to make a "nest" of greens to support the flowers... and that didn't even really work.
- I need to work on making an arrangment that can be viewed from all angles.
- The flowers don't travel well, I had a completely different arrangement when I got home than when I left class!

So I redid them. I made the arrangement more vertical this time, and I focused more on making it 360 degree friendly. I still like the original one best.

Parallel arrangement

I loved making this arrangement. The parallel lines make my OCD happy.



















Who's ready for their close-up? My parallel arrangement, that's who!



















And the example:

A diagonal arrangement.. in a teacup!

The title of this entry is self-explanitory. I loved making this arrangement, I also love that I'm not as scared to mess up. The flowers aren't as terrifying as they were a month ago; they've been moved down the list to intimidating.














This one below is the example, it's a little bit more on a diagonal plane than mine, I fixed mine when I got home.. But I'm not there right now to take a picture of it.














On a side note, Stephanotis is awesome.. Just like my corsage :)

Crown of flowers

I created my first design for someone this weekend. A friend was dressing as a Greek Godess for Halloween and her outfit would not have been complete without a crown of flowers. I had never before made anything like this, so I was completely clueless. I made a crude base with wire and covered my machanics with old baker fern from a previous arrangement. I wired a number of crysanthemums as I would have if they were corsages and attached them to the crown. It looked perfect! I ran across a number of problems, mainly not knowing how big to make it. I made it extra long so that I could just fold the back of the crown up after she put it on. It worked.

I made the crown on Saturday night, Tuedsay night I learned how to actually make one.. Great timing. Turns out that I was on the right track. Instead of greening the crown I covered the wire with floratape. Also, I didn't connect the back instead of making it extra long; it looked like a horseshoe. Then we tied it together in the back with ribbon (after I knew exactly how big to make it).

Triangle Arrangement.. the final product

I love festivities, I love holidays, I love an excuse to dress up as an 80's Prom Queen and to make floral arrangmements in pumpkin heads. I don't know where I inherited this from, it must be from mother. My mother's definition of Christmas can be found in the dictionary as over-the-top; rows upon rows of German Nutcrackers, candy (and toothbrush) filled stockings, and home-made cinnamon rolls... mmm cinnamon rolls.




















and while not nessessarily floral-related:




















I love Halloween

Triangle arrangement... a work in progress

When: Thursday 10.29.09; 1:30am
Where: My bed, tossing and turning until 5:30

Dr. Steve was kind enough to let me take home the materials to work on the arrangement at home when I wasn't feeling so zombie-eske.

This is what it will look like:



















This is what it looks like right now:



















Please ignore the dirty cutting board in the background. If I was too tired to play with flowers, I was definitely too tired to do dishes... in fact, I'm still feeling a little faint. The dishes can wait, the flowers cannot!

Bridal Bouquet #2

YESSSSSSSS!!!

I know that I said it before, but I love making bridal bouquets. While this is still not "the bouquet", it's still pretty awesome. We made a bouquet that is intended to be for more petite brides and is made up of an arrangement of concentric circles of flowers. Mine turned out a little larger with an addition of an extra row of daisy poms, maybe for an amazon-sized bride; otherwise known as a Christina sized bride.

I love you Miss Swan :)

Open Mound

World, meet Dr. Steve
Dr. Steve, meet world






















Don't mind the large arrangement sitting next to him, it's called an open mound and it is the bain of my existence. At least it was for about two hours last Thurday night. After tearing apart the entire arrangement and chopping at least two inches off of all of my flowers, this was the best impersonation that I could come up with





















It still barely fit out the door and into the car.
I have nothing else to say about this one... except ugh.

Cascading Bridal Bouquet

I can't express to you how excited I was when I found out that we were learning to arrange a bridal bouquet. When he first told us, I pictured what Dr. Steve refers to as "the bouquet". This is a collection of wall-to-wall flowers in a hand tied arrangement. Today's bouquet was not "the bouquet", but it was still a lot of fun to make and created a big scene when I walked into Daedalus later that night for drinks.





















I love it!
The example:



















The only thing that I would change would be to make it more durable. When I walked down my driveway the next morning I saw that it was littered with ferns and mini-carnations.

Damn it all to Hell.. Mishap #1

I have made a crutial foam misstake! I pushed a flower in too far, and then simply backed it out to the place in which I actually wanted it too be. No biggie, right? WRONG!




















Notice that the once-beautiful top rose on my Inverted T arrangement is now shrivled and wilted? Couldn't this have happened to one of my carnations instead? Only the good die young.

This happened because the foam acts as a water source to the flowers in addition to holding them in place. Since the water source wasn't in direct contact with the open stem of the flower, the flower couldn't drink. I feel like a murderer.

L-Shaped arrangement

The L-Shaped arrangement is also a "high style" line arrangement. It, like the Inverted T, is supposed to be able to be used for almost all occasions. Also like the Inverted T, I don't like it.





















I was extremely frustrated with this arrangement. Not because of the flowers, or the strict lines that we were supposed to be following. But because I reached a point in which I felt like I had too many flowers. When I was looking at the arrangement, I saw multiple holes that needed to be filled in, but there were already way too many flowers. I was stuck repeatedly putting in too many flowers that I thought I needed, when in reality I didn't need them at all. I asked Dr Steve about it when we were doing my critique and he had some very interesting and Zen advice.

"When you get to the point when you feel the need to put in another flower, take one out"

(paraphrased, I'm not voice-recording him 24/7... that would be weird)

I have definitely suffered from this before, and I will again. I'll have to keep his words of wisdom in mind for next time.

Corsages

I love everything about making corsages. They're fun, beautiful, and portable. I think that what I like best about corsages is that I get to take them everywhere I go. It's a constant distraction for me and must be very trying for the people that I'm with, but it makes me happy to constantly have my nose in a rose.

We covered corsages on the same day as the L arrangement. I feel that this belittles the wearable flowers in a way. Plus there are so many details that can go into them which were impossible to cover in less than half a class. Which is why I was more than a little upset to find that my finished product came out looking like this:




















BORING!!
My corsages from CCSF were by far more interesting!




















I will note that Dr. Steve informed us that there is a huge difference in corsages that are made on the east coast and ones that are made on the west coast. East coast corsages are more conservation (shocker!). Proving, yet again, that I will always be a California girl.

The Inverted T

This is an arrangement that I have never seen before. It is a "high style" line arrangement and I can only assume that it is called an inverted T because it looks like an upside down T.




















Dr. Steve says that this can be used for anything. It looks great on alters, mantles, as sympathy arrangements. I don't like it. But I was excited to play with these beautiful roses.




















The example is far more strict on the "line" part of the design.




















I need to focus more on the basic structure of the designs that we are working on. I went too far out on the sides of this arrangement and am flirting dangerously with a triangle. No one likes triangles; they're full of sharp corners.

Weekend Excursion

There is a store in the South End called Jacobson Floral Supply. They sell everything from a heart shaped foam form to a 50 gallon hot-pink vase. I went there a few months ago to pick up fancy lights to decorate my room. This weekend, I went there with a purpose. I was in search of floral foam, wire, plastic "vases", and tape. $80 later (ouch) and I had all of that plus a knife for use at home, since they are anti-knife in the studio, and two floral industry magazines. I've been going through them looking for inspiration and more information that I don't think I am going to be getting from Dr Steve. There are so many creative and beautiful arrangements that people are making! And soon, I'll be one of them.. I'll post a picture of my favorite.

More important than floral foam, if there is such a thing, is the woman that I met who works at Jacobson. Her name is Misty and she went through Rittner's 6 month program about 6 years ago. She gave me much needed advice and encouragement about the school and the program that I'm in. Apparently we will never move beyond daisies and carnations :( But, Misty's advice to me was to instead focus on the form and the methods. She showed me a number of designer examples that they had on the wall that were unique and inspired and related their basic form to something that I will learn in the next 12.5 weeks. She was so friendly, informative, and helpful; I'm grateful that she took the time to talk to me.

Funny image: Me carrying an enormous box of foam on the subway.. I'll upload a picture for that too. You'll laugh.. promise.

Oval arrangement

I am in LOVE with my oval arrangement! There is only one thing that I would change about it and that is that I would cascade the flowers more toward the end points so that it looks less like two carnations sticking out of each end. I attempted to do this, but it wasn't drastic enough.

Here is the example:














His stick out way far too. I asked him about this, but apparently this is part of the technique. Who am I to argue?

Roundy Moundy

Day One
I was so nervous for my first day of school. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know any of my fellow classmates, and I certainly didn't know if this was the program that I was looking for... and I might have been nervous that someone would steal my lunch and kick sand in my face.

Turns out that I had nothing to be worried about. I should have expected to play with flowers, have a friendly group of ladies as classmates, and a course that would remind me that not only do I have a lot to learn.. but that I really am going into this knowing relatively nothing. I love the studio, the walls are hot pink and it smells like Relles Florist. I remember showing up to work when I was there and walking directly into the refrigerator and taking the biggest breath possible. It was definitely my favorite part of the day, which I did over and over until it was time to go home. I'm a little disappointed that they do not allow knives in the studio, only clippers, but I'll deal. The instructor is a very animated man with a crazy head of thinning long white curls. He makes cheesy jokes so he's good in my book. The location couldn't be better, it's in a beautiful brownstone off Comm Ave. I definitely think that I'm going to be happy here.. at least for the next 12.5 weeks.

So tonight we learned how to make a round arrangement, well I was reminded how to do a round arrangement. Wow do I need practice!

This is what it is supposed to look like:




















This is what mine looked like:




















I like this angle better:


I like this angle best because it's harder to notice that my round arrangement isn't actually round.

it's happening!!

Hi Stephanie


Hope you enjoyed a nice Labor Day Holiday.


A more formal acceptance letter is on its way by post, but this is to let you know that we have received your application for the Evening Course starting Oct. 6th and that you have been accepted into that course. I believe that you will really enjoy our school.
Cordially,
Steve Rittner


Rittners School of Floral Design
Boston, Ma.
www.floralschool.com
tel: 617-267-3824