golly gee! those flowers are swell!

Florogaphy

2009-05-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

The type classes in the our design program here at Portland State have been doing experimental type lately, and I just wanted to share this project by fellow student Joanna Phan. I love the seeds becoming blooms across the word and wish I had more examples of her work. Check out our wonderful PSU design blog for more unusual (though not necessarily flower-related) type experiments here.

Bic Pen Vases

2009-04-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

The wicked team griffin'termeer, made up by Jess Giffin and Jim Termeer have come up with a wonderful second use for the common bic pen that we all know so well. By heating and blowing the used pen in the same technique as blowing glass they've created a sweet, single serving vase that forces you to do a double take. Check out all their stuff, they have some pretty good ideas.

Moss in action

2009-04-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

As promised, I'm back to give you a few ideas of things to do with moss. If you're lucky you might be able to find some in your own back yard, if not there are several varieties of dried moss on the market that can be bought at floral shops and craft stores. Like most materials there is no end to the things you can do with them, but the two things I tend to use moss for most often are potted plants and arrangements based in foam.

Potted plants:
It seems to be a fairly simple equation: Plant+ moss = fancier. Usually I will line the base of the plants with moss (pebbles are nice too) to give it a more natural and high end feel. You get a nice shift in the entire aesthetic with a minor addition.

Foam:
Covering the foam in an arrangement with moss rather than other types of greens can simplify and modernize a design. Rather than the usual tangle of greens used to mask the foam at the bottom of a dish arrangement, a simple sheet of moss can be pinned down. Floral pins are made and sold specifically for this purpose, but I have found that creating a U with a bit of wire can tack moss down just as effectively. I particularly enjoy arrangements made in moss because they seem to be more natural, as if a cute little assortment of flowers just happened to sprout out of a little hill of moss on their own.

Other mossy-foamy projects might include wreaths or balls, which seem to be all the rage right now. Instead of using floral foam, try recycling other types of Styrofoam and a hot glue gun.

Layerbylayer, a seller on etsy creates objects that are recycled, geometric and imaginative and I have fallen in love with his work (especially the magnets).

Eco-grafitti is another interesting use of moss. Instead of decorating urban spaces with paint or markers, some artists have taken to creating images through different methods. Here mosses were used to create words on walls. How lovely!

(Thanks treehugger.com)

Moss

2009-03-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

I'd just like to have a little shout out for moss. I love this stuff and have been fortunate enough to live in locations that happen to be dripping with it my entire life. My next post will be about how moss can be applied to floristry, but right now let's just look at some nice moss and contemplate how jaw-droppingly marvelous this plant can be.

Leaves

2009-03-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

I just came across the wonderful flickr site of escher1. Here is someone doing beautiful, inspiring things with leaves and flowers and such (and the rest of his photographs are quite nice too!)

Mr. Shilling is a land artist, creating temporary works of art made of bits of nature. The movement began in the 60s and 70s, it's most famous work being Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, which was built off the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake in 1970. It is sculpture with nature in nature. Most of this art form will go unappreciated by the world, as it tends to be done away from society and is very ephemeral. Thank goodness for photography!

How To Get Your Flowers to Stay Where You Want Them, Part Two!

2009-02-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

There are all sorts of other sneaky ways to control the placement of flowers in addition to using grids. Here are a few more:

Foam!

Floral foam is a wonderful invention. It can be bought in blocks and can be cut down to just the right shape for any container. In addition to holding water it will keep any flower standing exactly as you insert it. Arranging in foam is super easy and quick because you have to do a lot less negotiating with other stems to catch the angle you want.

It is very important to secure the foam to your container in some way. Nobody wants to be carrying an arrangement and have an entire block of flowers slip out and go flying across the room. That would be embarrasing. Fortunately you have many options:
A) Tape. With some strong tape across the edges of your basket or dish, trap it down Gulliver's Travels style. Waterproof floral tape is great. It sticks to anything.
B) Glue. Slathering some sort of hot-melt glue all over the bottom of the brick while it's dry, then pretting it directly to the bottom of the container works great.
C) Anchor pins. These are small, four-pronged plastic peices that look a lot like those tiny tables you find in the middle of your pizza sometimes. Just glue them to the bottom of your container and stick the foam right onto it. Use as many as you want.

A few extra tips about floral foam:

The best way to fill your foam with water is to fill a bucket with water and drop them in. As they fill with water they will sink down and you will know they are fully saturated. Don't push it down or run it under the sink. You will end up with dry pockets in the foam and there will be some osmosis of the wrong sort.

Covering your foam with a bit of chicken wire will reinforce it, in case you are using very tall or thick stems.

Rocks!

Dropping a few pebbles or marbles into the bottom of a vase will help keep the stems in place. Try it. Try other things too. Seashells, toy cars, beans, crystals, fruit.

Frogs!

Frogs are gold. They are heavy little metal things covered in spikes on one side that you can stash at the bottom of a dish or basket. Then you impail a bunch of stems on the spikes. They help hold the flowers up and keep them in position. They are great for high style arrangements and sometimes need to be secured (glue or tape works).

Grids are Freaking Important!

2009-02-20T15:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm going to start everything out with the most basic secret behind designing flowers: grids. Grids are awesome! Whether you don't realize it or refuse to admit it, these things are everywhere. Everything is on a grid. Electricity! Typography! Cities! Computers! Crossword puzzles! Grids make things work! And they make flowers stand up.

There are a bunch of different ways to create a grid over the opening of the container you are designing with. The easiest way, which I use most often, is stretching tape (hopefully waterproof, but if not oh well) across the top, creating a bunch of squares. Then I do a quick loop around the side to make sure it's nice an secure.

Voila! Instantly, you have narrowed the space within each stem will be placed and you have way more control over the position of the flower. Adding greens and any filler flowers on top of that will only increase your ability to place things exactly where you want them, since they have to go through way more stabilizing matter.

And don't stop at tape! Get creative the grids you make! In addition to the clear and beaded ready-made vase grids I've seen sold in stores there are all kinds of things that can be used. Things like string, chicken wire, cardboard. You could stretch some plastic over the top and cut holes in it. You could get a bunch of colorful rubber bands and put them all over the outside of the container. Take some wire or some sort of bendy stick, squiggle it up into a ball and jam it down into the bottom of the vase (anyone who says a grid has to be two dimensional is a sucker). Have fun with it!

Mission Statement

2009-01-28T15:48:00.000-08:00

Designing flowers kicks ass. So many people draw inspiration from nature, why not make something directly from it? I think that a bouquet can be more than a vase full of pretty things all mish-mashed together. They should explode! And play with line and shape, And have colors work together in mind-bogglingly weird or sweetly subtle combinations! Illusions can be created! Things can be referenced! What if someone arranged something that was booby-trapped?

I'm a design student at Portland State University, working in a tiny flowershop and loving every minute of it. Working with flowers has been an invaluable source of inspiration and opportunity to play with ideas and now I'm going to write about it.
This is going to be my space where I post a bunch of things that have to do with design and flowers, things that I think are awesome, and tips that I have learned since I got started in all this. I am going to admit here and now that I am a huge dork for this stuff, so don't be alarmed. Just snag yourself a bunch of flowers from somewhere, anywhere and have some fun(except for public gardens because you will a ridiculous fine. $500! Holy cow!).