I swear I have other content waiting in the pen for you all (all three of you), but for now, please accept this, a preview of the flowers you may find at my stand, as a humble offering. I've not only been approved by the building owner where I want to host my stand, but learned that there will also be a big event in town on Saturday which brings in a lot of foot traffic. Somewhere out there my freshman year digital design teacher, Ori Kleiner, is crying himself to sleep over this horrific grid alignment, but when you don't have a real cropping tool, thing get rough. 

I had not intended to use lavender in the scheme, but I heard that Moms love purple, and also really wanted to bring some of those lovely purple-loving Moms some deliciously scented lilac. Lest you be concerned that I have forgone my commitment to greenery, know that the bouquets will also abound in Seeded Eucalyptus, Dusty Miller, and Jasmine Vines (okay jasmine have flowers ON them, but they're sort of somewhere in between).  Bouquets will be $15, $25, and $50, but since they will all feature some assortment of the same array of flowers, if you swing by and don't mind waiting a few, I have planned to be ready with tools to rearrange the bouquets a bit to suit your price. 

So I had to post about Split-Flap displays after seeing the amazing one in this generally amazing signage-themed post on Design Crush. I would looove to incorporate this type of sign in the design of my shop, although I'm not sure how exactly... maybe with one line that would always display the shop name and other lines that could change... but not to anything advertising the goods directly because that would be kind of tacky.  

Although they are rare now, I remember the sheer magic of watching (and hearing!) the split-flap arrivals sign at 30th St Station turn over on the very special days when my mom would take me to New York on the TRAIN to see a matinee. I wonder if my children will find the current LCD signs quaint and charming in comparison with their modern four-dimensional holographic displays or whatever star trek shit they have by then. 

Just a few shots of an arrangement I did this week. Pretty much all of the non-face flowers in this bouquet came from my mom's garden, so you can call me the backyard flower bandit. Is it bad that I drive around thinking about which budding flowers I can get away with snipping? And how GORGEOUS are these ranunculus exactly? I really think they must be local... Jersey Ranunculus have been very good this year.

Normally, I wouldn't just plain re-blog something, but this wedding is so incredible from a floral standpoint that I felt compelled. Usually flowers constitute about 10% of a wedding's total budget maximum, but I would imagine that this couple spent significantly MORE. I'm doing a much smaller but sort of similar arch for one of my bride's weddings, and I was really excited to see how beautiful the effect was in this case. 

reblogged from Ruffled

As promised, pictures of the arrangement I did at the little flower school last weekend. Unfortunately, the shots don't really capture how leggy all the jasmine and eucalyptus was, but there's more where this came from on it's way. I'm headed out the door to do some shopping to get maybe vases and maybe flowers, or maybe neither, but before I go, a list of the flowers in the above bouquet, since I always enjoy when the stars are credited by others.  Ranunculus, Parrot Tulips, Chocolate Cosmos, Stock, Spray Roses, "Juliet" Garden Roses, Narcissus, Jasmine Vine, Rose Geranium, Dusty Miller, and Seeded Eucalyptus. More posts this week, I promise!

Despite the fact that I have much more flower arrangement content waiting in the holding pen, tonight I feel motivated to talk about my plans for a Mother's Day weekend sidewalk flower stand, which will most likely be located at Broad & Main in Riverton, NJ. I was thinking for a minute to forget about it but after my fabulous flower class this weekend (which I swear there will be pictures from), I feel re-energized for the project. 


My plan is to have a sort of miniature version of the aesthetic of my shop interior right there on the sidewalk, allowing me to hopefully draw unsuspecting passersby into my little world of flowery bliss. So as for my set up, here's some stuff I have planned:

 

images via True Value, Wholesale Flowers & Supplies, billyBoards, Dick Blick, Studio Calico


As I'm looking over these, I feel the conspicuous lack of color, a hole which will hopefully be filled with lots of beautiful, colorful flowers. I want to have a mix of flowers, but I may have to make some choices. There will definitely be pink, because I think its good for the wife and mom/grandma/etc. since, unlike red, it could be romantic or just sweet, although some less femme women may not like it so I hope to have some distinctly non-pink options available as well. I will definitely have either garden roses or peonies, if not both, and hopefully some delightfully free flowering branches and hydrangea filched from my own mother's garden. 


I will also need to finish my logo and print up some business cards (or maybe some kind of little post-card sized flyer with info instead), as well as design some nice little tags to hang on the bouquets that my customers can write messages on or have me do right there, if they prefer. Steve thinks I should commandeer some little children from a friend to boost sales, but I think that might be too distracting from the point of me getting my name out there. Maybe I'll settle for bringing the cute little pup along... at least no one will think he did the arrangements.

After seeing this post on Snippet & Ink, all I could really think was omgwtfpansies. Pansies were my favorite flower when I was little, because they were what I chose to plant in my first ever designated patch of garden. I suppose I have always had somewhat victorian sensibilities; I also chose a serious dusty rose for the color of my childhood bedroom at the ripe old age of 4 or something. 

Apart from my own personal history with the flower, I found this little bouquet refreshing amongst the never-ending parade of "big fluffies" in bridal bouquets (you know... peonies, dahlias, garden roses, etc). With so many modern brides choosing dresses that are a far cry from the Cinderella ball-gowns of their mothers, I think it's only fair to try and show more different styles of flowers as well. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I tried to get the sweet violets, which would have helped fix the primary functional problem of this bouquet, the extreme short stems. I didn't get them, but I think I could quite possibly have rigged the bouquet over a small floral foam core and used a very opaque wrap and no one would have been the wiser. As for the notorious short vase life and even quicker wilting out of water of these little puppies, I was surprised to find my little bouquet still pretty darn alive when I arrived home after about 7 hours, despite being barely in the water due to aforementioned short-stemage. I believe a bride could easily make it down the aisle with such a bouquet and then set it in water on her table during the evening and have it last the night. I hope some brides will take a chance on pansies in the future... the best weddings  are the ones that try things that are different because they feel right.

Instead of the flowers I promised, due to technical difficulties today we will be having a look into some of my plans for the aesthetics of the interior of Hellebore and the Swan the shop edition, which I have been thinking of just calling Helleborus, since I think it will look better as the type of sign I have been thinking about (more on that later).

First up is the fan favorite, chalkboard paint (in particular as juxtaposed with wood floors and other wood elements). I imagine the space as more or less a rectangle, although I guess it's only realistic not to be married to that idea, since I don't know where it will be yet. At any rate, I think it's important to limit the amount of wall covered in chalkboard since it is a flower shop and it's important for it to be bright. I was considering painting the walls light blue, but looking at some of these pictures, I'm loving it with white. I extra-especially love that little bit of floral paper on the back of the chair in the first picture. I wonder if that's wallpaper or decoupage or maybe drawer-liner? I think little touches of floral print would look so cute in a shop full of flowers!

images via the style files


I also have been toying with the idea of having a giant marquee light style sign. I haven't found much in the way of places to actually purchase such a sign, but since they have the sign below available at Urban Outfitters, I'm sure a professional lighted sign guy could handle it, no? I love both the old-fashioned script and the san-serif, though I think I would probably choose the latter.

images via Urban Outfitters, Lincoln High 1960

Lastly, though I realize certain flowers will be in the cooler, I think there is nothing more lovely than walking into a shop full of flowers out in the open. I hope to be able to facilitate buckets of flowers all about with strategically placed air conditioners or something of that sort. Oh, and lots of brown craft paper and baker's twine to wrap them in... can you see where I'm going with this?

images via Simply Chic, Once Wed

So, this is where it all starts, with a somewhat overexposed but still (I hope) appealing pictures of my latest treasure, a pot of Spring Promise Hellebores. The sun we get in our little hovel is pretty intense and high contrast, occurring in the hour or two just before sunset really begins. We, by the way, includes me, my someday-husband, and our little Papillon.

What are we doing here? I guess explaining that will require a bit of history (I'll try to make this short). About nine months ago, I graduated from a prestigious design school, which I am not yet sure I intend to ever name here, with a degree in fashion design. Let's just say it's in New York City and the aforementioned major is what the school is best known for. About 5 days after graduation, my lease was up, I moved out, and landed in something of a whirlwind back in the very place I came from. Fast forward, I'm still here. If you're just about anyone trying to get hired right out of school, or trying to get hired at all, I don't need to explain why. Needless to say this is not what I planned (hoped? dreamed?).

"Form a new plan!", I said to myself. So, without a long and likely uninteresting account of the struggle and meditation required to come up with one, here it is:

1. I will, instead of pursuing fashion head on for the time being, apply my taste and design capabilities to floral design. In the interest of improving my technique in this new area, I will practice and take classes. In order to build my portfolio, I will do flowers at-cost for a few weddings, a pretty major event, and it looks like a couple photo shoots.

2. I will blog about this new endeavor, with as much focus as I can muster on staying on-topic, in the hopes of building a sounding board for my ideas and photos of what I'm working on.

3. I will, sometime in the next year or so, open a brick and mortar flower shop. The shop will cater mainly to brides, but also serving more general floral needs of the public. I would like it to include some small bridal accessories as well, such as pretty hairpieces and wraps, some of which I may also design.

Who knows what will come of all this, but it's where I'm headed right now. More on all this to come, though the next post I have planned is just about beautiful, wonderful flowers.