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