True Blue

Baby I love you......
Can't get the Madonna song out of my head!
This design is what got it in there in the first place, hehe. :P

Thistle, artichokes, and delphinium.

Pink+Terra Tabbytosavit= AWESOME

I can't even begin to tell you how talented Terra is.....like seriously.
I was impressed with her easy going nature and by how nice she was as a person, then was further impressed with her professionalism and by the pictures she threw up on her laptop for the same day slide show that guests were able to see during the wedding reception. The pictures untouched were AMAZING and I couldn't wait for her to blog. I have been stalking*uh, checking* her site for the last two weeks and today I saw these!!!

I think the pictures are stunning, I think Adie looks freaking great! Nina is another artist I want to highlight because she did such a great job at making Adie look glam yet herself at the same time. She looked great but didn't look made up. Does that make sense???
Anyhow, back to Terra.

She's awesome and these are her pictures from her blog of the pink and chartreuse wedding I had a few weeks ago.

What a great looking wedding party, right?

Go to Terra's blog now and drool over her pictures! :P

Terra Tabbytosavit

My Glamelia Bouquet

I have been getting a lot of requests for tips on how to make a glamelia or where to get a glamelia or hey can you make me a glamelia? So I thought I would actually make a small sample for my friend to truly see if she wants one and how long it would take me to make one.

First of all, I posted about this last year http://kugab.blogspot.com/search/label/Glamelia

I made a true glamelia with gladioula petals. After all this is what it is. A composite bouquet or corsage made up of glad petals. The bouquet was made more poplar by KatherineHeigl when she used it as her wedding bouquet.

But from a book I have had for some time now, it is actually called a Malmaison Rose.
Here's a short excerpt from my book:
"The malmaison rose was perfected by Constance Spry and based on an early victorian tradition-creating an overblown rose form the petals of many perfect roses. All the rage in the 40's and 50's,. malmaison roses were made regularly for women attending society balls."

So it had instructions on how to make one, how its constructed, and the scary part is that it warns that when your hands get too hot, you must take a break or you will damage the petals and have to start again.
excuse me?
How serious can this be right?
Well........let's just say I mean to make a large sample but said "oh hell no" after 2.5 hours of wiring..........

I made a simple red bouquet using only bacara roses.
Perfect for a classic Red and brown themed wedding.
Like by brooch??? I can't get enough brooches in my hot little hand :P


Then I took this bad girl apart. The bouquet pictured above took 24 roses.
Small sized for a bridal bouquet I think but you take the dress and bride and make the bouquet to scale right? So I thought I would show you the size of this glamelia bouquet I made.
Here it is next to a regular rose.

Here it is with my daughter holding it.

Here is my glamelia in all her glory. :)

The Skinny:

It took for freaking ever. After 2 and half hours of wiring I wanted to call my friend and just say
"GUUURRRRLLLLLL"

Why you ask?
First of all, you must tear apart these roses and then pick out the petals that are relatively the same in size and shape AND color. I stress color because you can see where in my flower I used petals that were the right size and shape, but too red. So it's not the flash or anything, they were just truly a lighter shade than the rest. For a sample it's ok, even for the day of it would be alright, but I am a bit picky and it's irking me that I left it that way.

Secondly, when you get going you have to be careful when you are wiring because I cannot tell you how many petals I ripped apart, the best method for me was a hairpin technique then carefully pressure where the wire meets the petals. Even then I would wire two or three tear one, wire two or five, tear two in a row.

Third- they were right, if your hands get hot,. you do tend to manhandle the petals and make more mistakes so you have to take breaks. I would wire like 10 -15 then I would take a breather then, do like 30, then stop for a minute to unclench my fingers.

I would not want to do this with any other color. ESPECIALLY white because white bruise easily and some people still believe the only way to prevent this is my using white latex gloves when designing with white roses. I personally don't do it, but I know I would not be able to wire rose petals with gloves on and if a red small glamelai took me almost 3 hours from start to finish, then a large white one would take at least 6-8 hours I think.

The deep red hides, blemishes and its pretty easy to cover up mistakes once you get going as long as you space them right.


I left it out all day today in this vase.
I'm kinda diggin how this looks, but not enough to make these as centerpiece.
So don't even think about asking!!! lol



In the end, I think it will last through the day ok if you use a small foam bouquet holder as your mechanic and are super duper careful all day long. There is no water source so I would say this is ok for like winter, early spring weddings. MAYBE fall? I don't know about the summer or in areas where flowers will tend to wilt whether they are in water or not. Like a poor Savannah bride who emailed me about this bouquet. I felt bad for her and suggested she make a silk one because if it's done right, no one will be able to tell!


This is what was left. all the little petals...poor babies.

Hope you like my glamelia/malmaison rose bouquet!

Papyrus Event {Week TWO}

SO next week is the bridal fair. I have been delivering fresh flowers to their stores this month and nest week will be the bridal fair where they will have vendors helping out couples with ideas and information. Should be tons of fun and I can't wait!

This little purple beauty is kale, purple sweet peas, dusty miller, and a little lemon leaf.
Showy and pretty against all that white.

I have purple on the brain since I have a purple wedding that I am sketching out....

Silver and White Phalaenopsis Wedding {The set up}

If you live in San Francisco, 70 degrees is what we consider a really nice day, 75 is "hot". So imagine our surprise when today the weather was 83?!??!? OMG. It was waaaay too hot for me! I was DYING.
Yesterday in Rohnert Park it was 90.
90.
I was working so hard I hardly noticed until we left and sure enough as we hit the Golden Gate Bridge it was down to 53 degrees. Crazy.
Anyhow, just had to get that out of my system, lol. :P

Unfortuantely I don't have quite as many pictures as I normally do of the set up or the ceremnoy, or the wedding because my camera broke(I will be sans camera for 3 weeks! What will I do with myself?) and the chip I used had the smallest capacity in the world, so bear with me.


{Silver Wedding}

I met my Phalaenopsis bride in a far far away land called Weddingbee.com.
She seemed really nice, so I gave her some tips on DIY florals and then she delighted me by asking if I would be available to do her floral work, to which I replied demurely:
Hell yes!
So we went back and forth and then one day she asked about the beautiful Phalaenopsis Orchid and we started to create her wedding flowers around this moth orchid as some people call it. I like butterfly personally, but anyhow, she wanted a green hydrangea bouquet with white orchids for her bouquets as well as the brides maids.

Here is the Bridesmaids bouquet, it was smaller than the bridal bouquet and it was ribbon wrapped with left over fabric from their bridesmaids dresses. The biggest most beautiful green hydrangeas came in from Columbia so it only took 2 large heads to make the bridesmaids bouquets. The Phalaenopsis orchids were individually wired in.

It was so incredibly scenic out there. I mean I'm not kidding you! Look at this picture.

Here I am taking shot of the ribbon collar on the bouquet and there's a duck just taking in the view in the background, hehe. I couldn't have staged it better.

The flower girl would carry this green hydrangea pomander down the aisle. I decided to add in orchids to this pomander to match the wedding party and I accented with a silver ribbon handle and a simple tie at the base. I could have gone all cute with a ribbon but the orchids are the stars of this pomander thank you.

We arrived to the location which was Foxtail Golf Club in Rohnert Park and started to set up the centerpiece. I blogged about them earlier this month here and once constructed we set up 19 tables. The centerpiece was a potted Orchid with hydrangea at the base of the centerpiece, the white pots were ribbon wrapped with
silver satin and they were placed on a moss mat adorned with a single phalaenopsis flower.

I had extra orchids that weren't used and so I gave one to the banquet manager to wear in her hair. Pretty cool, huh? Pretty soon all the other gals working the event had orchids in their hair!

Here is the shot of one of the boutonnieres. Simple phalaenopsis orchid with a green hydrangea floret and bouillon wire around the stem.

Here is a shot of the corsages. Double bloom orchids with a little fern, some silver decorative jewelry and a silver satin bow.

Then it was onto the gazebo. Here we just decorated the top of the archway with a floral spary that consisted of pittosporum, lemon leaf, dendrobium orchids, chrysanthemums, stock, amaranthus and alstromeria.

Then just when I thought it was time to go home, the groom me and asked me about the cake.

To which I replied, huh???? Ok, so I was more eloquent than that but in my head I was like HUH?

Turns out the cake person left and didn't decorate the cake. No one saw them come in and set up and no one was there to call me or even the couple.
I was asked to decorate the cake and here is what it looked like.

I didn't have a picture or anything, I just knew she needed a certain amount of hydrangeas and orchids so I did the best I could!

Then it was time to leave and I left the couple and from the parking lot I stopped to watch her walk down the aisle. She actually ran down the aisle, I bet when she sees the video she will know she was running to her man!!! Too cute, she was all smiles ans she looked lovely.
Cool as a cucumber in that heat I tell ya.

Thanks for letting me be a part of your wedding J & B, much love and happiness to you both!

Phalaenopsis Orchid Wedding

What a beautiful day it was in Rohnert Park yesterday.
It was 90 degrees?!?!?!

My Phalaenopsis Bride walked down the aisle. Correction, she RAN down the aisle to marry her beau!
I have limited photos to share this time because my camera broke two days before the wedding. *WAHHH!!!*
RIP Cannon.
So I have to go out today to send it out to see what they can do about it. I really take too many pictures is what I think happened because I have had it for less than a year....
Once I sort through the pictures I took (thanks to one of my BF's Monica, who let me borrow her camera), I will share!
The bouquets and boutonnieres looked really good(toot,toot, hehe), I used green hydrangeas and white phalaenopsis orchids only for the bridal and bridesmaids bouquets.

Wedding Wreath {Stephanotis}

I'm so upset I broke my camera...*sob*
There I was, flashing away on a floral arrangement I made, next thing I know the camera goes completely white! Like the aperture is not working or something???
My camera is less than a year old and I broke it. :(
So I am digging in my pictures of florals past and found this to share with you.

We got some fresh stephanotis donated and I worked on this
fresh floral stephanotis wreath in the shape of a heart with Ruby.
Perfect for a wedding and smells heavenly.


This baby took 125 fresh stephanotis!!!!
Holy moly, that's a lot of flowers but it smells SO good and it's so pretty I know some bride out there may want to splurge on something like this for her ring pillow or sweetheart table. :)
What's something like this cost you ask?
Between $150 and $375 depending on who makes it for you!

Pink Ikebana

Pretty in Pink

Ikebana today was so relaxing. Everyone was fresh from a week long break. The creative juices were flowing and I was able to knock out two lessons. I just applied for my Sogetsu School certificate in Book One and Book Two and am awaiting my diplomas as we speak. :)
Of course they take about 4 months to come from Japan, so yes, I'm a little anxious, hehe.

Here is a little number I made with pink snapdragons.
The lesson was using flowers in the same tonal range as the container.

This one is Kabuwake.
It's a freestyle arrangement using two kenzans.

I used flowering pittosporum, ecuadoran pink Esperance roses, and pink spray roses.

Cream of Tomato Soup Flowers

She wanted Kitsch, I gave her copper bundt cake pans in her kitchen and cream of tomato soups cans on her mantle.

I love it when people say do what you want, here are my colors!
I got a call to dress up a home for a woman's dinner. The only instructions I got was to make it fun, bright and hopefully something that could be taken home at the end of the night.

So I kicked around a few ideas and asked Brandon for some help and here is what we came up with.
We kept a food and drink theme for all the flowers and started with the kitchen pieces.
The first was a bright red and orange floral arrangement made out of Tulips, freesia, seeded eucalyptus, safflower, carnations,red and orange gerbera daisies, mauve cymbidiums, and orange roses. I designed the flowers into copper bundt pans so they could sit on her kitchen counter.


The second was designed in a copper "le saucier" pot that I absolutley adored and hated to part with!

For her piano I made these flower cocktails in margarita and wine glasses with that colored foam I talked about a while back.

She was thrilled with how well they matched all her home decor and was happy she would be able to give everyone a floral arrangement when they left for the night.

Ok. So here's the deal with these flowers. Remember when I said I thought that the coke bottles in the bathroom at the De Young were kinda cool and that I thought they would make great centerpiece? Well I wasn't playing around! I was dying to make them and then out of the blue someone asked me for them!

I thought they looked great on her mantle.
I used billy balls and tulips in the coke bottles and safflower, orange roses, red carnations, orange and red gerbera daisies, and some seeded eucalyptus.

I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie...

....to the hip hip hop, a you don't stop
the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie
to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat....Sugar Hill Gang...? no? oh.
ooops. Wrong Holiday.

HAPPY BUNNY DAY!

Whether you celebrate or not, have a wonderful Sunday!
These bright flowers went to a Passover dinner last night.
I delivered these flowers to the Castro in San Francisco yesterday to a Susan who only instructed me o bright yellow. She wanted dashes of red and I immediately thought of my favorite tulips!

Aren't they fantabulous? They are yellow parrot tulips. They are so bright and cheerful and the shape of the petals slay me.

I used yellow snapdragons, red alstromeria, yellow fancy roses, yellow parrot tulips, orange rununculas, yellow mini carnations, some green asparagus, and green bluperum.

Here they are set up in her home.
Bright and cheerful :)

Happy Easter Everyone!

Sympathy Flowers

I am taking a Sympathy class in which I am learning how to make floral arrangements for Sympathy work. I didn't think it was going to be something I would be making right away but here I am, making arrangements for two young individuals who passed away within two weeks of each other. One was a tragic accident and one lost a battle to cancer. I was sad but honored to be the one to make some flowers for them. I made sprays of red and white flowers for one and green, red and white for the other. I also made a casket piece, a cross, a small doorway arrangement and a broken heart. :(

Much to my surprise, Funeral work is exactly like making wedding flowers. I don't particularly like that the flowers are so even-steven and so I tried not to space so much, but rather tried to group together a bit more. But in all the books I researched this is the style in which they are made. Good old fashioned western design.

So when it came time to making something I could just make as a freestlye, I chose to go with my Ikebana principles: less is more.