Former Floral Students — Where Are They Now?

by Flower Duet Editors

Whether it is a bride who wants to do her own flow­ers for her wed­ding, or some­one look­ing to change careers to start a flo­ral busi­ness, or a hob­by­ist who wants to per­fect a pas­sion, we have been able to assist in those dreams and goals. Here is a nice insight into where a few of them are now. After we col­lect­ed some sto­ries, we thought it would be fun to write our own, too.

Name of your busi­ness: Flower Duet.

What has been your most reward­ing flo­ral job or event? Most recent­ly, the post-Gram­my Awards par­ty for the Sony Music Group because we worked with a won­der­ful lady named Mabel who has been design­ing with pot­ted orchids for years, but want­ed to break into flo­ral design. We loved work­ing with her for this event.

When is your next event? In addi­tion to pri­vate flower arrang­ing lessons, a few cor­po­rate gigs and wed­dings, we have two big flower class­es in April. At our stu­dio, we’ll be work­ing with spring flow­ers includ­ing the won­der­ful­ly full and frilly Ranun­cu­lus on April 21st fol­low­ing our tour of the LA Flower Mart. Then, on April 28th, we’ll be teach­ing two class­es at The Hunt­ing­ton Library in San Mari­no. Inspired by the Shake­speare Gar­den, we’ll be using the Bard’s flow­ers for a design in a tall vase design for the adult class and to cre­ate a fun posy for the kids’ class.

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any oth­er name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet

Have you had an “aha” moment since you start­ed your busi­ness that you would share with bud­ding florists? We’ve had so many since we start­ed in 1999. The biggest advice we can offer is to plan ahead, buy extra flow­ers and sup­plies and always bring those to the drop off place. You nev­er know if some­one acci­den­tal­ly pins a bou­ton­niere on the wrong per­son (this hap­pened to Kit and she had to make a new one on the spot!).

What tip did Flower Duet give you that is still help­ful today? For us, we’ll go back to our moth­er who always said, “Be nice to every­one.” We found it real­ly helps to be nice to our ven­dors as well as our clients, prospects and poten­tial busi­ness part­ners. You nev­er know when you might need your ven­dors to help you with an emer­gency. It pays to treat every­one with respect and dignity.

Name of your busi­ness: Ta’­Dah Boutique.

Have you had an “aha” moment since you start­ed the busi­ness that you would share with bud­ding florists? It real­ly hit home we CAN do this. It will take some time and hard work, but we can def­i­nite­ly see a future in this and we can’t wait :). Con­fi­dence in your work is key if you can sell your­self you can do anything.

What tip did Flower Duet give you that is still help­ful today? Ali­son says, “Too many to name just one. I have learned so much about flow­ers, flower care, cus­tomer ser­vice, and busi­ness suc­cess. Just hear­ing your sto­ries has real­ly helped me to see that this is some­thing I want to do pro­fes­sion­al­ly.” Stacey says, “How to care for the flow­ers was the biggest learn­ing for me but of course design I start­ed from noth­ing and learned every­thing from the basics to arrang­ing from them.”

What is the name of your busi­ness? Sim­ply Ele­gant Flowers.

What has been your most reward­ing flo­ral job or event? The wed­ding I did this Jan­u­ary . The cou­ple are friends of mine and it feels good know­ing that I helped to make their day extra spe­cial. I was also chal­lenged by the job. The wed­ding required 51 cen­ter­pieces and a bridal arch, in addi­tion to per­son­al flowers.

Have you had an “aha” moment since your start­ed your busi­ness that you would share with bud­ding florists? “Pick up lilies four days or more ahead of your event.” It takes them for­ev­er to open. Also, there is no such thing as a quick job. Always give your­self more time than you think you need.

What tip did Flower Duet give you that is still help­ful today? Every event I make sure to give myself at least three days to get pre­pared for a wed­ding and I always order an extra bunch of everything.

What is the name of your busi­ness? Fan­ta­sy Flowers.

What has been your most reward­ing flo­ral job or event? Teach­ing flo­ral design work­shops in Cairo every Wednes­day night.

What tip did Flower Duet give you that is still help­ful today? I had the full course. I use every sin­gle thing I learned and now, in my busi­ness, I teach it to others.

What is the name of your busi­ness? Romee’s Garden

Doris Melamed has tak­en many class­es with us at our stu­dio in Tor­rance and had some pri­vate lessons, too.

What has been your most reward­ing flo­ral job or event? Cre­at­ing new designs all the time!

What has been your most recent event? A show Doris gave last week­end show­ing her own designs and tech­niques. She says, “I have made beau­ti­ful and cre­ative designs. It was a great expe­ri­ence for me because I was able to make new things. It was a lot of work though, but every­one loves my work and that is a good thing.”
What tip did Flower Duet give you that is still help­ful today? You can do any design and you can fig­ure out some designs on your own.

Book a class with Flower Duet and see what hid­den tal­ents you have in your fingertips.

Succulents are Growing

by Casey Schwartz

We con­tin­ue to fea­ture a huge vari­ety of suc­cu­lent plants in many of our flo­ral designs and our lit­tle suc­cu­lent nurs­ery is now bet­ter equipped to han­dle the babies who are sprout­ing and root­ing everywhere.

Our father, whom our kids all call “Pop,” vis­it­ed ear­li­er this month and did a great deal of car­pen­try work to make bet­ter sense of my odd col­lec­tion of wob­bly tables, leg­less pal­lets, and bun­dles of wood stakes.

After two full days of almost non-stop work, Pop cre­at­ed a love­ly col­lec­tion of sev­en stur­dy tables which were ready to sup­port our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of suc­cu­lent plants. The new arrange­ment of tables enables me to move the suc­cu­lents in and out of the shade and sun.

Pop Boxes Available Soon!

Pop has also cre­at­ed what we are call­ing “Pop” Box­es. They are for “Liv­ing Art.” We call them “Pop Box­es” for many rea­sons besides that fact that they are named after the designer.

• First, you Pop in Cac­tus Mix Soil.
• Then, you Pop in your suc­cu­lent cut­tings and wait for them to root.
• Final­ly, you Pop the art piece onto an out­door wall.

It’s long last­ing, fun to look at and fun to make, too. We were recent­ly com­mis­sioned to make two “Liv­ing Art Pop Box­es” for an illus­tra­tor and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Miyu­ki Sena, who want­ed them to help show­case her graph­ic illus­tra­tions at a recent art show.

We will have these avail­able for pur­chase soon on our Duet Store with instruc­tions on how to put them togeth­er. You will be able to fill with your own cut­tings of suc­cu­lents or order a kit from us from our Flower Duet Suc­cu­lent Nursery.

How To Transport Flower Designs to Your Next Event

by Casey Schwartz

Post-Floral Design Scenario

• You have been hired for a big event.
• You’ve select­ed and pur­chased the flow­ers, con­di­tioned, cre­at­ed and tweaked them to per­fec­tion in your var­i­ous sized vas­es and containers.
• Then, you look at your car, van or SUV and won­der, “Will it all fit? How will I keep my vas­es from falling over?”

Transport Solutions for Flowers Work!

In the ear­ly days of Flower Duet, we would have to plan for an extra hour just to load our twin Hon­da Accord sedans to ensure a wor­ry-free dri­ve. We saved all the card­board box­es our flow­ers came in from the whole­saler, care­ful­ly placed each vase into an open box and then bunched up a lot of news­pa­per around the com­plet­ed vas­es and con­tain­ers to keep them from tip­ping dur­ing deliv­er­ies. This would take so much time to get all the vas­es secured and we knew there had to be a bet­ter way!

When we upgrad­ed our flo­ral deliv­ery fleet to Toy­ota SUVs, we thought it was a great time to upgrade our deliv­ery sys­tem as well.

We had been eye­ing a few options, and then it became essen­tial to make the invest­ment in a new sys­tem. We secured a large job for Chanel and were tasked with a dai­ly deliv­ery of over 25 tall cylin­der vas­es every day for a week to var­i­ous Los Ange­les hotels for Fash­ion Week. We need­ed a good reli­able sys­tem that did not con­sist of card­board and news­pa­per! I made a call to Semi­nole Flo­ral Deliv­ery in Flori­da and placed an order for a full set of grids and pins.

We’ve had this sys­tem for five years and it is so easy to use, not bulky, very stur­dy and water­proof. Basi­cal­ly, you place your com­plet­ed flo­ral design — vase, con­tain­er or bas­ket on the grid — and then sur­round with the appro­pri­ate length post.

We have not had a fall­en vase using this sys­tem and con­tin­ue to be amazed at how we have been able to fill both our cars full of all kinds of vas­es and con­tain­ers.  Anoth­er new type of sys­tem to mar­ket which we have not tried yet is called Flower Tote and we may try it out for Kit’s car. I will be order­ing and giv­ing a report on how we like it in a future newslet­ter. Stay tuned and keep those vas­es upright!

FREE Video: How to Create a Magnificent Bud Vase

We con­tin­ue to add more free videos to our YouTube chan­nel. Casey appeared on behalf of Flower Duet for the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 sea­sons of Cre­ative Liv­ing, which airs on PBS sta­tions across the coun­try. We are able to air these seg­ments with the per­mis­sion of Cre­ative Liv­ing via our chan­nel on YouTube!

This month, Casey shows Sheryl Bor­den from Cre­ative Liv­ing how to cre­ate two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent bud vase designs. One design fea­tures den­dro­bi­um orchids and the oth­er show­cas­es clas­sic ros­es. Any­one can learn to make a won­der­ful arrange­ment like this one!

Sub­scribe to our YouTube chan­nel: fash­ion­ingflow­ers so you’ll know when we’ve uploaded a new show!

Book Review: Shakespeare’s Flowers

Shake­speare’s Flow­ers by Jes­si­ca Kerr

In hon­or of the class­es we are teach­ing at The Hunt­ing­ton Library this month for Shake­speare’s Gar­den, we review a book on his flow­ers. If you want the per­fect ref­er­ence book for your own Shake­speare gar­den or flo­ral bou­quet, this is the one to get. You can down­load it instant­ly to your Kin­dle and start using it today!Complete with beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions by Anne Ophe­lia Dow­den, this book would also make a won­der­ful gift for an enthu­si­as­tic dra­ma stu­dent who is star­ring in Ham­let, Mac­beth or Romeo and Juliet.

In The News

Flower Duet has been in the news a lot late­ly. Check it out.

Floral Design Tool: Nitrile Gloves

It’s Just a Bet­ter Rub­ber Glove
Okay…so these rub­ber gloves are not exact­ly sexy, but they are won­der­ful for pro­tect­ing our hands when things get sticky, dirty and messy. Our dad (see the sto­ry about suc­cu­lents at low­er left for more on him), bought these to give to his vol­un­teers when he was a house leader for Habi­tat for Human­i­ty for the last eight years. He brought us a few hun­dred for our flower jobs and we use them for lots of things. You may think by look­ing at the pho­to above that they are just like any kind of painter’s gloves; how­ev­er, in our expe­ri­ence Nitrile gloves have more dura­bil­i­ty than latex gloves. They don’t tear eas­i­ly and can be reused, too.

Use For Messes
Here are some exam­ples of when these gloves come in handy:

• When work­ing with Sphag­num Moss, you should always wear gloves. There is a chance of con­tract­ing a skin fun­gal infec­tion from the moss, so always pro­tect your hands.
• When work­ing with flo­ral spray paint to paint flow­ers or pots, we some­times are just hold­ing the item in our hands and again, it’s good to use the gloves so we don’t show up with blue paint on our fin­gers when hand­ing over some blue hydrangeas. We don’t want to give all our secrets away!
• When work­ing with sticky Oasis Flo­ral adhe­sive. This stuff is soooo sticky. It’s essen­tial to pro­tect the fin­gers from that.
• When plant­i­ng ter­rar­i­ums and using the char­coal in the soil. It’s a good idea to pro­tect your hands from the char­coal. See our Feb­ru­ary 2012 newslet­ter on How to Plant a Ter­rar­i­um.

We know that cre­ativ­i­ty is messy, but why not keep your hands clean in the process?

Where to Purchase
Home Depot or Har­bor Freight Tools