Ahoy! Wedding ship is sailing!

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I recently received an order for the wedding center piece in a shape of the sail boat. Almost quarter of weddings last season were “Marine style”. Well, I live in St. Petersburg, Russia. It’s a port city after all. I was worried that my customer would ask for a wooden frame and three carnations in the form of towers. To my luck he told me: “It’s all up to you, just make sure arrangement is ready by tomorrow morning.” Yay!

After unsuccessful search for ideas online, I decided to go to the flower market and choose something blue and white for this project. As a result, I bought Delphinium, Spray White Carnation and Calla Lilies. Unfortunately, there were out of regular lilies and only had mini calla lilies in stock. I think larger flowers would have looked even better!

Around midnight I was weaving frame of thin wire around two pieces of oasis. I changed direction at least five times because ideas in my head were changing with the speed of light. It took a while to secure Delphinium flowers and carnations to the wire. I used thin tweezers to pull their thing stems and secure them in a sponge. I added Callas in the last five minutes. Initially they began to lean and fall in different directions adding pressure (stress even) since morning deadline was fast approaching. To resolve this issue, I inserted the wire into flower stems and mounted them again. It worked!

Process was long and time-consuming, but this arrangement to this date is one of my favorite pieces of work. It was challenging, fun and creative! By the way, in case if it’s not clear from the picture, the un-open sharp buds from chrysanthemums suppose to look like cannons of the ship! 🙂

PS I am still waiting for the picture from the wedding table. When it’s available I will share it with you!

Spring Mood with White Chrysanthemum!

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Today’s flower arrangement is for the beauty salon reception desk. Outside the window is white Russian winter, but I feel that its time for a cheerful spring mood! Following the trend, I chose fresh colors: Green salad (Chrysanthemum Global Green, Green Bell greens), Cyclamic (Carnation) and soft purple (Hyacinth, Speedwell Veronica).

I want the focus to be on chrysanthemums, but they did not want to open completely. I added couple more white flowers to balance out the arrangement.  I prefer fun asymmetric shapes to emerge

once flowers open up. The result was a sudden explosion of white on the side of the arrangement. And now it looks even more cheerful than I intended!

P.S. All selected flowers last more than a week.