Mardi Gras Party Flowers

Couple quick shots here of an arrangement that my assistant, Francoise, did for a Mardi Gras party last week.

Funny delivery story - so I carefully packed the flowers in a milk crate, our standard thing for safely transporting something this size. I get to the party location, pull the milk crate towards the car door and unpack most of the stuffing around it so I can lift it out of the crate.

I lift the vase up out of the crate - and there's only half a vase! You see that nice flared pedestal bit at the bottom? Well, I guess the vase was made in 2 pieces and fused together. Or unfused in this case, as I definitely had 2 pieces of vase, and no broken glass.

So I had to quick, repack that guy up, and whiz back to the shop, and put the flowers in another vase. Stuff happens some times. You just have to be ready to act when it does.

Francoise had a fun time painting up these masks which were black to begin with, and I knew we'd find a use for those purple ostrich feathers!

Prom Flower Trends

I've been so busy for the past 3 weeks or so, I've fallen really behind on blogging, but will try to correct that in the next week or so!

I picked up some great new products for the prom season and can't wait to use them! Every year this stuff just gets better and better. There's fabulous rhinestone jewelry, including a necklace that will be amazing with a flower accent and in the wrist corsage category there's an awesome cuff and a spiral arm band.

No granny pantie elastic band wristlets here!

I'm also working on creating Prom Profiles to help you, or help your date, choose the flower accent that best suits your personality and style. I'm hopelessly not cool, but you can help me create the profiles by following the Sprout Facebook page and Sproutflowers Tweets.

Photographing Flowers!

This is a sneak preview look at the photo-stationary-paper-flower collaboration I worked on today! More to follow!

I had the best time!!!!!

Phalaenopsis Orchids

Do you remember this wedding? You know, the one with all the amazing phalaenopsis orchids in everything? That we did wa-a-a-y back on January 3rd?

Well, here are the last two orchid blossom from that wedding - still alive! I've done nothing special to them, gahd I'm lazy about that kind of stuff at home. Only at home! At work I treat the flowers with much more love!

They were super expensive, but so worth it when you consider how long I got to enjoy them. I bought these on December 31st - holy cow!

Centerpiece Prices

Followers of my blog, know that from time to time I price out centerpieces seen in bridal magazines, as a way of educating and informing the reader.

We always get a great response to those posts; people are often shocked at the cost of the things they see in those magazines. Magazine florals are created without a real person budget in mind, and are truly designed for the camera.

Well, since I know you all are out there pricing things on line, educated consumers that you are, I think this year, in addition to my pricing out magazine photos, I'm also going to give you some prices of centerpieces used in real Sprout events.

Please bear in mind, that prices will reflect what it would cost me to make the arrangements as I post, and may be more or less expensive than what the original client paid, sometimes because of seasonality, sometimes because I learned a thing or two since making the original, and some times because I had to substitute more expensive flowers than what was originally paid when quality was an issue.

So here we go!



Large centerpiece, red carnations, roses, ti leaves - $150 (exclusive of client's stand and photo set up)

Centerpiece featuring Dutch blue hydrangeas - $80.

Daffodil centerpiece - $45.

Cylinder vase with peonies, hydrangea, and gerbera - $130.

What do you think, is this helpful? Should I do a post like this again?

Flora in Winter - Challenge Design Class

OK, I've been out straight this month, not the least of which included planning and doing many things for the Worcester Art Museum's Flora in Winter event. One thing I did this year which I haven't done before, was participate in the designers Challenge Class.

Four designers were given the same materials to work with and the same inspiration to work from. The materials are a complete surprise, although we were given a few minutes to look them over, and the inspiration was the architecture of the Renaissance Court area of the museum.

Here everyone is during the words of introduction, poised with those ginormous blocks of floral foam! Mental note - cut down all that foam as soon as they say - go!

We had plenty of time to work and they encouraged us to talk with the audience about techniques and what we were thinking about while we worked. I can tell you that we were all thinking - not enough greens! Although no one said it out loud. OK, the woman next to me said under her breath how she'd kill for a ti leaf, but I'm sure I'm the only one who heard her! That was the main challenge - how to hide all the foam with the limited materials.

Here you can see my final piece in front of the inspiring architecture.

The four pieces were as different as the designers who created them! It was so interesting to how 4 people with the exact same materials and inspiration will see and create so differently.

I have a reputation at the museum for being the abstract minimalist, so I'm sure it was no surprise my arrangement was the most spare. For interpreting an artwork, that seems to be the way I work best, paring down forms. Interestingly, that's not necessarily what you would automatically see coming from my shop, or what I might have at home.

Form. Texture. Line. Mass. Color.

Expression!

$50 Wedding Centerpiece Challenge

So the challenge has ended, but I need a day or two to get my crap together and compile a post for voting. Bear with me folks as I pull it together! 2010 has had me flat out since "go" and I'm behind on everything. :-)