How-To
ano
C D
Raising the bar
on wedding
style at Florabundance Design Days.
READY FOR A
CLOSEUP With
professional photographers on
hand, participants
could take away
evidence of their
completed projects
and learn from
the experience of
designing for the
camera.
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16
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRUCE WRIGHT
YOU’VE PROBABLY NOTICED: There’s a lot of competition for wedding
work these days. Much of it is coming from “studio” florists, wedding
specialists without retail shops, many of them relative newcomers to
the industry. The stereotype among established florists is that these
newcomers may be lacking in design training and technical expertise. They are often associated with a “natural,” botanical style, much
How-To
Can-Do
promoted via social media, that reinforces
the stereotype, because it looks careless and
naïve. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t; it
takes a trained eye to know the difference.
Giving the lie to the stereotype, about 40
wedding florists gathered in January at the
fourth annual Florabundance Inspirational
Design Days in Santa Barbara, California.
THE NOSE KNOWS Garden roses have
become a key element in fashion-forward
wedding florals—so it makes sense that the
Design Days included a speaker, Eleanor
Clevenger from David Austin Roses, to talk
about designing with these fragrant, romantic flowers. “The most common mistake is
that people tend to order with too short a
time frame,” Eleanor noted. “If you have a
wedding on Saturday, you need to bring in
garden roses on Monday, harden them off
if your wholesale has not already done this,
then leave them out so they will open up”
(although opening times can also depend
on the variety; a handout was provided with
guidelines). As a rule of thumb, says
Eleanor, garden roses ready for design
should be the size of half a grapefruit.
The scent peaks when they are fully open.
The design seen above was created by
Alicia Schwede of Flirty Fleurs, the noted
designer, blogger and publisher—who
delivered savvy tips to Design Days participants on maximizing the power of the
internet to promote your business.
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TECHNIQUE FOR HAND-TIEDS Kim Curtis of
Toast in Santa Barbara (pictured below) taught a
basic technique for making a hand-tied bouquet.
“I like to have all my stems prepped and ready,”
she said—meaning, wired and taped for better
control and support. Planning to include fronds
of umbrella fern, for example, she clipped two
from the natural stem and taped them to a wire
stem, so she could add them both at once. Likewise, she showed how to replace the thick stem
of an amaryllis bloom with a slender wire stem
for easier handling. She explained how to hold
the stem bundle in the hand, with a loose grip
shaped like a C, adding flowers in such a way
as to create depth and dimension, for a look that
is somewhat loose, but not wild. She periodically
looked at the bouquet in a mirror, as a handy way
to check on its appearance from the front. One
participant in the bouquet workshop, Polly Robinson of Michler’s Florist in Lexington, Kentucky
(above), adapted a centerpiece technique demonstrated by Holly Chapple the day before, using
a sphere or egg of chicken wire to control stems.
At right, Katalin Green of Katalin Green Flowers in
Bozeman, Montana holds her finished bouquet,
with ribbon streamers and a euphorbia cascade.
FROM CHICKEN TO EGG Holly Chapple (pictured at
center left), the influential D.C.-area wedding designer who leads a collective called Chapel Designers,
shared a wide-ranging perspective on the business
while she demonstrated a centerpiece strategy using chicken wire as a mechanic. She doesn’t shove
the chicken wire inside the vase, but fashions it into
an egg shape and places it on top. (Florist chicken
wire, she advises, should really be the kind that is
coated in green plastic, although she was unable to
procure it for the demo.) This technique allows her
to support tall branches, place greens so that they
drape around the sides, hiding the egg, and add
flowers such that their stems show inside the clear
glass vase, not the chicken wire. Participants were
each, of course, provided with materials including
gorgeous flowers from Florabundance. Below, Katie
Noonan of Noonan’s Wine Country Designs in San
Luis Obispo, California, looks happy with her work.
How-To
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Some were wedding florists only; about a
third had full-service retail shops. Presenters
ranged from Holly Chapple, a well-known
exponent of the trendy, loose, botanical style,
to Françoise Weeks, famous for an intricately
detailed, woodsy look. Capping the threeday program of hands-on workshops was a
session on arches, chandeliers, and hangings with industry icon Hitomi Gilliam AIFD.
While the Design Days were definitely inspirational, they were also highly practical,
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COLOR STORIES Weddings are all
about color. Representing Design
Master, BJ Dyer AIFD, from Bouquets
in Denver, shared some clever ideas
for using color tools to enhance containers. He sprayed glass votive cups
(this technique works on taller vases
as well) with gold (any metallic color
will do), then scraped them with a
table knife to let some of the light
through. He wrapped a tall cylinder
with twine, sprayed the cylinder with
Design Master Olive Bright, and then
simply removed the twine to create
a spiral pattern on the vase. BJ also
demonstrated the best technique for
using Design Master Just for Flowers
to enhance fresh floral materials for
“those matchy-matchy brides,” misting it in short bursts.
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with an emphasis on sound mechanics and
cost-effective techniques. “I love social media,” Holly told the crowd, “but when you see
something pretty on Instagram, you have to
ask, did that really go to a wedding? Did it
last all through the day? I have to feed my
kids, so my business depends on the things
that I make staying fresh and not falling
apart.”
“Good mechanics give you the confidence to be more creative,” said Hitomi, who
shared ideas for making sturdy, large-scale
floral structures that are rentable and reusable. Of these, “if you build a structure that
is already beautiful, you then add flowers but
you don’t need as many,” she pointed out.
OUT OF THE WOODS Françoise Weeks (seen at
center far right) and Susan McLeary shared a
program in which they taught how to make floral purses and botanical jewelry by gluing lightweight, small-flowered, durable materials (like
succulents, spray roses, firm hellebores, and
astrantia blooms) to a sturdy foundation: jewelry
blanks, purchased or fashioned out of flat or aluminum wire, or shapes carved out of Styrofoam
and covered in cardboard. The purses typically
include a cavity to accommodate wet floral foam,
lined with clear thin plastic wrap. Susan also
demonstrated a necklace made on a vinyl foundation, a horseshoe shape cut using a template
from material purchased at a fabric store. While
this technique might seem labor-intensive, Susan
assures that she is able to charge enough to be
well remunerated, not only for her time and materials, but for her creativity and artistic eye.
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How-To
Can-Do
Those who invest in education know its
value. “I learned things here last year that I
have used all year long to make a better profit,” more than one participant testified. The
bottom line: the more you learn, the more
you understand that artistry and practicality
go hand in hand.
For
more
Inspirational
about
Florabundance
Design
Days,
visit
www.florabundance.com. b
STANDING TALL In a daylong workshop with
Hitomi Gilliam AIFD, participants learned how to
make a variety of large-scale decorative structures—arches; floral walls and curtains; chandeliers—that can be swiftly finished on-site with
fresh flowers. As just one example, Hitomi made
a tall “totem” using inexpensive black stands and
70-inch-long willow whips, both purchased from
Ikea, with floral foam strapped to the stand and
a foam sphere resting among the fanned willow
whips at the top. One key to the structure is to
separate the stacked layers of foam with plastic,
which keeps the top layer from draining to the
bottom so the flowers remain hydrated. “A stand
like this is one way to develop height in your design even before you start adding flowers,” says
Hitomi, “which is how you get the most visual
value from the flowers.” Her completed design incorporates tapered bundles of midollino wrapped
in raffia, with aluminum wire in the middle of
each bundle, “which allows you to control the
flow.” Other projects that participants completed
under Hitomi’s direction included a “living wall”
of phalaenopsis plants; curtains made of twigs,
Bind Wire, smilax, and water tubes filled with gloriosa blooms; and a chandelier (above) based
on a foundation of grapevine and willow whips,
hung with downward-facing flowers including
‘Miranda’ David Austin garden roses.
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