Recycled Wine Bottles: Use As a Vase Idea

By Casey Schwartz

The lat­est vase on the scene comes in a stan­dard shape, in a few sub­tle earthy shades and has a very small open­ing. The ancient, ele­gant wine bot­tle is grac­ing tables this wed­ding sea­son. Records indi­cate that glass was cre­at­ed in the area we know today as Syr­ia in 3000 BC, the Romans then devel­oped glass blow­ing and the wine bot­tle was born. More ele­gant than a giant clay con­tain­er which the Greeks and Romans had been using.

Wine is an estab­lished guest at many social occa­sions and cel­e­bra­tions, so it is not sur­pris­ing that cre­ative cou­ples and design­ers have found a great way to re-pur­pose these glass pieces.  The wine has already been enjoyed and the bot­tle is re-filled with water and flow­ers.  Unal­tered they are rather tall for a table, how­ev­er because they can only take a lim­it­ed num­ber of stems, they cre­ate a light and airy arrangement.

One of our engaged cou­ples has worked out a suc­cess­ful tech­nique of cut­ting the wine bot­tles at two dif­fer­ent heights so that we can use the trio on the tables for their wed­ding. The tall bot­tle will be graced with a tall line flower, and the two low­er pieces will be filled with green­ery and select­ed flow­ers. We will be sure to post these images on our Insta­gram and Face­book pages after their August wedding.

July 4th Flower  Ideas

We have a long week­end com­ing up and Flower Duet will be cre­at­ing flow­ers for two wed­dings over the week­end. So, while you are bar­be­quing and head­ing to watch fire­works, we’ll be putting fin­ish­ing touch­es on bou­quets, bou­ton­nieres and centerpieces.

For this annu­al fes­ti­val of red, white and blue, we thought we’d offer a few new ideas on how to dec­o­rate for Inde­pen­dence Day! Have fun!

Kit Wertz joins The Bloomin’ News as Design Columnist

Kit Wertz of Flower Duet has been con­tract­ed by The Bloomin’ News to write flo­ral design arti­cles for each issue. This month marks her for­mal intro­duc­tion as the new design colum­nist. In the July 2014 issue, Kit’s author biog­ra­phy appears as well as an arti­cle about col­or and pat­tern for summer.

The Bloomin’ News is the quar­ter­ly pub­li­ca­tion of the Orig­i­nal Los Ange­les Flower Mar­ket. It is a flo­ral news mag­a­zine for retail florists, design­ers, event and wed­ding plan­ners, dec­o­ra­tors and oth­ers in the flo­ral indus­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in met­ro­pol­i­tan Los Ange­les and South­ern California.

Kit is very excit­ed to be part of such a won­der­ful and his­tor­i­cal part of the flo­ral trade in Los Ange­les. You can pick up a hard copy of the mag­a­zine at the Orig­i­nal Los Ange­les Flower Market.

Book Club Studies The Language of Flowers

And…then learns how to arrange flowers!

We were con­tract­ed by a love­ly group of ladies in a local book club to cre­ate a cus­tom flower par­ty work­shop that reflect­ed the lat­est book they were study­ing in their group. They had just fin­ished read­ing New York Times Best­seller Vanes­sa Dif­f­en­baugh­’s The Lan­guage of Flow­ers which is about a young woman who spent her child­hood in the fos­ter-care sys­tem who finds that the only thing that she under­stands in her life are flowers.

Casey took them through a class which includ­ed two tech­niques of build­ing flow­ers in a vase and told each stu­dent the mean­ing of each flower. In Vic­to­ri­an times, young ladies stud­ied the lan­guage of flow­ers which was called “flo­ri­og­ra­phy.” There were many pub­lished dic­tio­nar­ies dur­ing that peri­od that edu­cat­ed their read­ers on the secret mean­ings that each flower held. By giv­ing some­one a bou­quet of flow­ers, you could actu­al­ly be send­ing them a mes­sage — intend­ed or not!

We held a class at The Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tions and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens this past June for chil­dren aged 7–12 about how to cre­ate Tussie Mussie bou­quets which also held great mean­ings. Here are some flower recipes that have a shared theme of love, friend­ship and remembrance.

Love Message Tussie Mussie Bouquet

Dark Pink Spray Ros­es — Thankfulness
Green But­ton Mums — Long Life, Cheerfulness
White Alstroe­me­ria — Strength
White Stock — Last­ing Beauty
Fern — Sin­cer­i­ty, Fascination

Memorial or Missing Friends or Family Bouquet Flower Message

Red Rose — Love, Har­mo­ny, Joy, Luck
Red Zin­nia — Thoughts of Absent friends
Pur­ple Sta­t­ice- Nev­er-ceas­ing remembrance
Rose­mary — Remembrance
Mint — Warmth of feeling

Friendship Flowers

Yel­low rose — Friendship
Orange Ger­ber Daisy — Friendship
Sol­ida­go — Encour­age­ment, good fortune
Scent­ed Gera­ni­um — Love, Fun, Understanding

You can learn more about the lan­guage of flow­ers by study­ing Flo­ri­og­ra­phy or by pur­chas­ing one of many dic­tio­nar­ies on the subject.

The Lonely Bouquet Project

By Kit Wertz

The Lone­ly Bou­quet is “a move­ment ded­i­cat­ed to spread­ing hap­pi­ness and smiles, one flower at a time.” It was found­ed by an Amer­i­can woman who lives in the Bel­gian coun­try­side, grows flow­ers and cre­ates cus­tom flo­ral designs for wed­dings and spe­cial occa­sions. Her organ­ic flower farm in Bel­gium is called Fleu­ro­pean where they grow dahlias, ros­es, peonies, cos­mos, pop­pies, aneomone, ranun­cu­lus, del­phini­ums, hydrangeas, clema­tis, tra­di­tion­al cot­tage flow­ers, herbs and wildflowers.

The basic con­cept of the Lone­ly Bou­quet is to:

1) pick flow­ers fresh from the garden

2) arrange the flow­ers in a small, recy­cled jar

3) add a sig­na­ture “take me!” tag

4) leave the home­grown arrange­ment behind for a lucky local to take home and hope­ful­ly make a stranger smile!

Our local whole­sale flower mar­ket near LAX, Mayesh Whole­sale Florist, asked me to par­tic­i­pate by mak­ing a bou­quet at their facil­i­ty using their donat­ed flow­ers on Wednes­day morn­ing after I picked out my order from the cool­er. I picked two dif­fer­ent ros­es, Star of Beth­le­hem, Dusty Miller and plumosa green­ery to cre­ate a sim­ple hand-tied bou­quet that I left out­side the entrance to a retire­ment home in Tor­rance. I reg­is­tered the bou­quet online at thelonelybouquet.com to see if any­one adopt­ed it. I am just hap­py know­ing that I must have made some­one else hap­py with flow­ers on Wednesday.

Inter­na­tion­al Lone­ly Bou­quet day was held June 29, 2014, but you can par­tic­i­pate any day of the year!

Book Review: Decorate With Flowers

by Hol­ly Beck­er and Leslie Shewring

In this gor­geous and unique book, Decorate author Hol­ly Beck­er teams up with styl­ist Leslie Shewring to offer prac­ti­cal know-how and col­or­ful inspi­ra­tion for dec­o­rat­ing the home with flo­rals. Begin­ning with the basics of flower arrang­ing and pro­gress­ing on to dec­o­rat­ing ideas for a range of styles—such as vin­tage, eclec­tic, and mod­ern— with cre­ative DIY flower and con­tain­er projects pep­pered through­out, this book offers a bunch of fresh ideas for flower enthu­si­asts and home dec­o­ra­tors on any budget.

We love the sim­plic­i­ty of this book and its time­li­ness with the trend toward dec­o­rat­ing with flow­ers that you might grow your­self (field to vase move­ment) in your own gar­den or can obtain from a local farmer.

Where to pur­chase: At major book­stores or online.

Floral Design Tool: Paint Brush

How to Clean Vases with Small Openings

By Casey Schwartz

Usu­al­ly adding a drop of bleach and fill­ing a vase with warm water does the trick for clean­ing vas­es. Some­times though, the lin­ger­ing film is just too stub­born to release with­out a lit­tle elbow grease. I was at the sink with some vas­es with a chal­leng­ing 1/2″ open­ing and a  per­sis­tent green hue at the very bot­tom. After some unsuc­cess­ful soak­ing, swish­ing and aggres­sive swirling lead me to a search for anoth­er option.

My kids had been paint­ing and their paint brush­es had been rinsed, and sat on the kitchen win­dow sill.  Sit­ting in plain sight was a per­fect tool. Slim enough to fit, long enough to han­dle and a per­fect brush to loosen the sticky sub­stance.  With the arrival of the wine bot­tle vase, a longer paint brush would be in order.