On my online workbook this week: The thing!?! Do you remember the thing?!?

Dear

This week's inspiration is remembering good things.

My tip for you this week is about proportions. It gets harder and harder to calculate as we venture deeper into unique design territory. We have all been taught that our design must be one and a half times higher than our container.

Easy to do when you are placing flowers in a vase where we can control the stem height but what to do when the grass is only this long and curve only this high? Adding anything else into the design to give it height will completely change the designs and spoil the clean minimal design look I was going for.

My advice is to remember all the good things that we have been taught about proportions and see if we can use it in a new way. Can you change the design perspective by using your flower to visually adjust the proportions?

A loophole in the “one and a half height” rule can be found in horizontal designs where we adjust the design to create the correct proportions to the side (horizontally) of the container.

Leave the flower stem longer and suspend it in the water, not touching the top and not touching the bottom. This way we visually disregard the vase as part of the design and our focus remains on the plant material. Our eyes focus on this stem and this is what we pick up on and use to measure the proportions. Now when you add the grass shelter it must extend one and a half times the flower stem horizontally, cleverly adjusting the proportions to still “look right”.

Enjoy!

Every good wish,

Christine

ps: A special note to teachers. Be careful that your design adjustments still respect the original vision of the design. An easy fix rarely does that. Respect the creative vision as well as the design tradition.