Wednesday, June 26, 2013

A lot vs a little

What I love about floral design is that there are so many roads to take when you have fist full of flowers to play with.
The flowers needn't be very expensive. You can take the design concepts of a more traditional arrangement and mix bits from your garden or the roadside with store-bought, as in the first one. When we open our eyes and minds to including what's growing around us, it's a big wide world out there.
This makes me laugh because while my husband might do a double-take when an attractive woman walks by, I'm more likely to do a double take when I see some floral something that's caught my fancy (unless he's really cute...).
The first bouquet was inspired by the stem of the sunflower, of all things. I loved the pale, lime green and wanted it to show, though most "design rules" may have suggested that I cover it up, not leave it sticking straight up. But as this blog shows my experiments in my floral "laboratory"( as in "la-BORE- atory"), I can investigate, try out ideas and have permission to make things look really ugly, so that they might eventually look more beautiful.




The second one is that five minute kind of arrangement. I don't even know what to call these: contemporary, rustic, messy? These are the ones where I could put more in, but often stop so that just the bare bones show and each element looks important.



Monday, June 17, 2013

A little behind

You might be able to tell that this photo is out of date. We've long bypassed these hellebores and spring branches. Just checking in. I've been remiss. And it's not as though I haven't had some seriously beautiful flowers around. TraderJoes had some amazing peonies a few weeks back from Half Moon Bay, brought out of deep refrigeration (peonies can be held in refrigeration to delay bloom time). The very first bunch I bought turned from magenta to yellow to antique white. I've never had a flower change color like that while maintaining it's shape. They were spectacular. I kept buying more bunches of them in other colors but none performed that transformation. But for weeks I was engulfed in the subtle scent of peonies.