There are plans to hatch,
nests to repair,
and summer wishes to share.
It all looks fantastically possible...
On that first warm day in May
On the first warm day in May is the title of a popular 1952 song by Rosemary Clooney
Weave a grass pebble for the orchid to nestle in.
1 May 2012
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Designing adventurous Contemporary Floral centerpieces Article in the
Canadian Florist Magazine
Braiding and plaiting and knotting hair is a huge trend in hairdressing at the moment. Intricate little plaits are draped over long flowing hair to add complexity and quirk. It’s a lovely design trend to add to floral art.
19 April 2012
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Sunday April 22 is Earth day and a tiny floral fridge magnet is a wonderful reminder of just how beautiful our planet is.
13 April 2012
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
The sprouts are sprouting and the bees are being and the birds are birding. Tempting as it is new growth is hard to condition. Hard, but not impossible
A clean Easter design. The tiny blossoms are Kalanchoe 'Calandiva Pink'. Tucked low in the paper eggs are a few Cymbidium orchids and the twigs are contorted hazel. The feathers are made from Kyogi or shaved wood.
3 April 2012
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Designing Contemporary Floral Accessories and Body Flowers Article in the Canadian Florist Magazine
This is the fourth and last design I did for my Floral Fable demonstration.
This is a detailed look at my third Floral Fable design. When you design, every detail you add matters and the smallest element can change the design completely.
This is a detailed look at my second Floral Fable demonstration design
This is a detailed look at my first Floral Fable demonstration design
I did a Floral Art demonstration at The Capilano Flower Arranging club. Over the next few weeks I will show the designs in detail and add the design tutorials. This week I’ll look at the concept, the basic mechanics and the Floral Art structures, constructions and armatures used in the demonstration.
10 March 2012
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
This was my design for The Capilano Flower Arranging Club workshop. We were exploring designs using all things edible: fruit, vegetables and a bit of herbs.
6 March 2012
Rating: 4.5 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Instead of weaving a platter try stacking the twigs from large to tiny small
28 February 2012
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Time Saving Tips and Article in the Canadian Florist Magazine
22 February 2012
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
My design entered for evaluation at the Floral Trends Design Group meeting in South Africa
15 February 2012
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
A small hand held design as an alternative to a corsage.
7 February 2012
Rating: 4.5 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Love grows!
I wrote this article for Wedding Business Success (an online meeting place for the wedding industry) exploring a positive way of looking at creativity and... stealing!
25 January 2012
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
The design drips down in three tiers each celebrating life, love and connection.
18 January 2012
Rating: 4.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
This contorted hazel twig reminded me of an ancient and wise bonsai tree. It definitely has a story of its own to tell. I wanted to capture that in my design. All it needed was to be aged with a beard of lichen and moss. And I couldn’t resist adding a lighter touch of fragrant paper white snowflakes to swing gently on its bare winter branches in the chilly breeze.
5 January 2012
Rating: 4.6 (5 votes) Please add your vote
Floral Craftsmanship Article in the Canadian Florist Magazine
Is it better to go Cold Twinkle Turkey and embrace the minimalist living room or rather ease into it?
28 December 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Delicate glass bubbles filled with the midnight blue African violet flowers, purple ornamental capsicum and spilling down the design are a few stems of rosary vine
20 December 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
A small, all natural gift box woven from palm
Wire spirals twisted around candles to make small Christmas trees for the Christmas Eve dinner table
I wanted my Hazel twig wreath to look like forest filigree: mysteriously overgrown, tangled with age and dappled with moss and lichen. The wreath is also dressed with fresh and dried flower bud clusters and operculum of Eucalyptus.
29 November 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
I used wire, fishing line (mono-filament) and Phalaenopsis orchid roots to make a messy lace Christmas stocking and dressed the stocking with frost green Cymbidium orchids
Christmas Flower Trends 2011 starts with a Floral Craft Assignment from the Floral Trends Design Group to make an Earthly Angel garden decoration.
The elongated heart shape Echeveria waist corsage is meant to be worn low around the hip as a trailing ribbon clasp.
9 November 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
I designed my posy to be light and feathery but also earthly, like a fresh snowball gathered from a forest floor.
1 November 2011
Rating: 4.5 (2 votes) Please add your vote
A floral design snapshot of what it looks like when walking down the streets of Vancouver this week.
A fun Halloween ghost pumpkin design
19 October 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
I wanted my parasol design to be thoroughly me, and thoroughly contemporary yet respectful of the guiding rules and methods shared by the different schools of Ikebana.
13 October 2011
Rating: 5.0 (3 votes) Please add your vote
I have always been fascinated, as a designer, by the idea that there is a point when extremes or direct contrasts flip into its opposite.
7 October 2011
Rating: 4.3 (3 votes) Please add your vote
Thanksgiving pumpkin with Chinese lanterns and spiral blossoms
29 September 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
A twig and stick design with sweet dumpling pumpkins and rosary vine (Ceropegia woodii). I also made a cherry twig and skeleton leaf Stick Insect
21 September 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
The fan is made from 18 coffee stir sticks and dressed with a veil of grass, fall leaves and Viburnum berries
My take on harnessing elegance, simply looped from lily grass. Cool, as in attention-grabbing idea. Collected, as in held together. And contemporary as in the latest thing
6 September 2011
Rating: 5.0 (5 votes) Please add your vote
Autumn leaf composite flower
30 August 2011
Rating: 4.2 (4 votes) Please add your vote
Freely translated it means Each Moment, Only Once. It is a saying associated with Japanese tea ceremonies.
24 August 2011
Rating: 5.0 (3 votes) Please add your vote
A Touchstone is something or even someone that you can rely on to evaluate the strength or worth of an idea or concept.
Japanese aesthetic, wabi-sabi, acknowledges three simple truths:nothing lasts, nothing is done, and nothing is perfect.
10 August 2011
Rating: 4.8 (4 votes) Please add your vote
Pleats are accordion like folds of equal width in alternating opposite directions in any kind of fabric. I absolutely love the tight buds of Allium and they represent the "pleasure" part of my design
3 August 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
The heart shape of my corsage is woven from shaved wood and then decorated with green strawberries. I used corsage magnets to place the corsage on the lapel of a jacket
26 July 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Succulents are really trendy right now. Not just as potted plants but also in designs. All the way from floral accessory to fashion accessory- right on trend!
21 July 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
When you need inspiration for a design problem study a Traditional Craft- you will be amazed!
Kyogi Paper and Phalaenopsis Orchids Blown Away in the wind
5 July 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Throughout their dangling history tiny to robust tassels were universally used as a finishing feature in fabric decoration and symbols of standing in religious order and nobility and military ranks.
21 June 2011
Rating: 4.7 (3 votes) Please add your vote
I wove my Zipper from just over 300 short, dried rose twigs with tiny thorns on them. The delicate "fabric" at the back of the design is woven rose bush roots. Aranthera and Aranda orchids in tiny test tubes covered with rose stem bark are placed in the Zipper design.
7 June 2011
Rating: 5.0 (3 votes) Please add your vote
The name Cymbidium or boat Orchid is derived from the Greek word Kumbos meaning "hole or cavity", referring to the hollowness in the base of the lip of the flowers.
2 June 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
The Asian Cymbidium is considered a gift of respect and friendship. The florets are also considered symbols of "virtue" and "morality" in many other cultures.
28 May 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
This is a wired bridal bouquet.
These dramatic sprays of orchids have thick, waxy flowers with five pointed sepals and petals (of approximately the same dimension) on each bloom and will last 2-4 weeks as cut flowers and 2-3 months as flowering plants.
11 May 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Tulips continue to grow once the stem is severed from the bulb. More often than not you can use this growth to create an ever changing design. But sometimes you want that tulip to stay in the position it is placed.
If you force "recycling" into a design it attracts too much attention and distract from the beauty of nature- which is still the point of Floral Art.
Design 3:Wedding Tiara. This is a real Cinderella design, one moment scrubbing pots and the next getting ready for the ball.
25 April 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Design 2: Up-cycle drinking straws to make tiny test tubes to hold the orchids on my willow twig blind.
24 April 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Up-cycle the inner plastic ring from a roll of floral tape to make a wrist corsage
21 April 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Spring "Ice cream" posy with a Banana Leaf "cone"
12 April 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Good bye Cape Town, Hello Vancouver!
So much goes into one stage design that I thought it would be worthwhile to break up the design elements and explore each in more detail.
When I demonstrate I focus on sharing the art of contemporary floral design, as I see it.
I prefer not to drape fabric over or hide my designs behind a screen before a demonstration. Instead I create a "diversion" that will capture the audience's interest.
3 April 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
I needed the wreath to be as light as possible to make sure it would "dance in the rain" on the flexible metal stand.
I wanted my design to feature mostly growing plants- creating a natural display on the supernatural wreath.
When I started researching mud as a possible enhancement to contemporary floral art I was thoroughly inspired by the possibilities.
28 March 2011
Rating: 4.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Weaving hot glue spider webs
Because it was my birthday I wanted to give the audience each a slice of birthday cake to celebrate with me. For obvious reasons I settled on dark chocolate Mud Pies.
Yearbook of the Western Cape Association of Flower Arrangers: Rondebosch Flower Club Demonstration "MUD!!!"
20 March 2011
Rating: 4.7 (3 votes) Please add your vote
60 Butterfly net kits
In March I will use wax in all my designs
18 March 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Chrysanthemum Hourglass
A mould is a hollow container or profile used to give shape to molten or hot liquid material as it cools and hardens.
Waxed fruit and a Hot Glue nest
1 March 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Reflex Tulip and Passion Fruit Tendrils in a wax disk
28 February 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Durbanville Flower Club Parting Favors decorated with coffee filter and water colour roses
Over the coming month I will explore and use Oasis (focusing mostly on Rainbow Oasis) in my designs and add a few tutorials as I go along.
25 February 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
It's not really what we call things that matter but what they are made of- in this design, it's made of all three types of Oasis and wool.
19 February 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Twig waterfall creates the boundary between the "under" and the "over" of the design. Tutorial: How to cover test tubes with Rainbow Oasis
50 Gift bags for all my flower friends at the Floral Trends Design Group
17 February 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Hanging garden Design using Rainbow Oasis Powder
Carving hearts out of Rainbow Oasis to create an under water design
Create the two or more coloured details with Rainbow Oasis.
Wax and Rainbow Oasis keep the flower heads in place.
29 January 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
Water stream breaking through ground in an autumn forest.
Every designer knows how to stretch their supplies. We use and re-use our dried plant material until our fellow designers feel like hiding it from us. I formed such an attachment to my vine wreaths. This post features four designs using the same wreaths.
14 January 2011
Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Please add your vote
Flax leaves are ripped with a kenzan and wrapped with copper wire and small blue beads to create a rope to weave into a delicate spider web.
5 January 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
To create this huge Protea I took apart nine Protea flower heads and glued the tepals and bracts back on to a polystyrene ball. As a romantic accent I made two palm leaf butterflies with Protea bract wings to cuddle on top of the flower.
1 January 2011
Rating: 5.0 (1 vote) Please add your vote
My design "Desalination" featured in the 2011 South African Flower Union Calender
Subscribe by RSS
Follow on Twitter
christine
