When you have a lot of events going on with lots of design­ers help­ing, it’s a handy idea to have ways to make the bou­quet pro­duc­tion line go faster and smoother! One way we’ve helped this is to mark buck­ets with the num­ber of stems per bou­quet or cen­ter­piece so at a glance it’s easy to pick out the right num­ber of stems for each design.

One of our reg­u­lar helpers is a painter who rec­og­nized as a way to improve our non-reusable paper method of label­ing buck­ets with stem counts.

For Casey’s birth­day, she sur­prised her with a col­lec­tion of hand-made, dec­o­rat­ed and lam­i­nat­ed cards to be used for the pur­pose of keep­ing the Flower Duet Pro­duc­tion line going!

Here is the box with all the cus­tom-made num­ber cards inside along with a beau­ti­ful message!

Here is an exam­ple of all the num­bers she cre­at­ed for us. There are mul­ti­ple sets of each number.

Here is an exam­ple of the sweet hand-drawn detail on a num­ber 2 card.

Num­ber 4 shows that we need to use four stems of lisianthus for that par­tic­u­lar design.

Free Class of the Month

Check out how to make an ele­gant Long and Low cen­ter­piece based on an actu­al design we did for a char­i­ty event. This class fea­tures tech­niques you can adapt to any num­ber of designs and uses a vari­ety of pre­mi­um flow­ers includ­ing ros­es and spray roses!

This is part of our ongo­ing Flower Arrang­ing Fri­day series you can sub­scribe to for a low month­ly fee! You’ll receive down­loads of the sup­plies used in each class, step-by-step video instruc­tion and lots of tips along the way!

For this mon­th’s free online sam­ple class, Kit shows you how to cre­ate a long and low cen­ter­piece that is sure to impress. Pho­to by Flower Duet

A Full Bouquet of Lessons one Stem-At-A-Time

Our Flower Arrang­ing Fri­days series is a per­fect­ly-sized approach to learn­ing the art of flo­ral design. With each mini-class, we’ll show you a tru­ly use­ful flo­ral design tech­nique in a cur­rent event flo­ral design style. This class series will keep you won­der­ing what we’ll show you next!

As part of each class, you’ll receive: 
1. A down­load­able PDF list of sup­plies includ­ing the flower recipe.

2. Easy-to-fol­low mini video lessons so you’ll nev­er have to rewind the video to see a step again.

3. Tips and florist secrets to help you be a suc­cess­ful flo­ral arranger!

Casey and I have been part of the move­ment to inform con­sumers on the val­ue of Amer­i­can Grown Flow­ers since 2013 when we invit­ed Debra Prinz­ing into our stu­dio to speak about her book, The 50 Mile Bou­quet. As a result of that rela­tion­ship, we’ve been intro­duced to a pletho­ra of farm­ers who grow amaz­ing flow­ers and green­ery with­in a short radius of our stu­dio! In 2016, we con­tin­ued our role as brand ambas­sadors for local­ly grown Amer­i­can flow­ers by design­ing the Field to Vase Din­ner flo­rals for the April din­ner at The Flower Fields in Carls­bad. It was a once-in-a-life­time expe­ri­ence to design flow­ers on a farm and then sit down to a local­ly pro­cured and pro­duced din­ner with 150 guests!

This guide, pub­lished by the Cer­ti­fied Amer­i­can Grown Coun­cil in part­ner­ship with Florists Review Mag­a­zine fea­tures farm­ers and flow­ers from around the Unit­ed States. Its pur­pose is to fur­ther assist retail­ers to use local sup­pli­ers for flo­ral and green­ery supplies.

The cov­er of this year’s Amer­i­can Grown Farm & Flower Guide.

A detail page of the Flower Farm Direc­to­ry por­tion of the guide which shows loca­tion by state with address, phone num­ber, con­tact email and web­site address.

Part of the guide fea­tures 2‑page spreads of large farms with a bou­quet or arrange­ment show­ing the wide vari­ety of flow­ers and foliage grown by farm­ers across the Unit­ed States. This page fea­tures Cam­flor based in Wat­sonville, California.

The guide also includes a Botan­i­cal index of flow­ers and foliage grown with­in the Unit­ed States again demon­strat­ing the wide vari­ety of pop­u­lar blooms and stems today’s design­ers crave.

In case you missed the Slow Flow­ers Sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. this sum­mer, you can now watch the videos of all the speak­ers! Debra Prinz­ing, founder of Slow Flow­ers and its Sum­mit has put togeth­er and is offer­ing a chance for you to see all the speak­ers from this year’s event. Here is a trail­er video and a chance to pur­chase the videos from SlowFlowers.com. Casey and I were speak­ers at this year’s sum­mit and our pre­sen­ta­tion and flower demon­stra­tions are avail­able to see, too!

Video Release: SLOW FLOWERS SUMMIT 

Slow Flow­ers Sum­mit Video Series-2018 from debra prinz­ing on Vimeo.

The Slow Flow­ers SUMMIT took place on June 29th in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and if you missed it, no wor­ries! You can now enjoy a “vir­tu­al” pass to expe­ri­ence Christi­na Stem­bel of Far­m­girl Flow­ers’ inspir­ing keynote, as well as all four of the fea­tured pre­sen­ta­tions that we record­ed on video. Click the video trail­er above to get a taste of the Sum­mit Video Pack­age, which you can down­load and watch for an afford­able price of $48.

Flower Book Recommendation:: Rachel Ashwell: My Floral Affair: Whimsical Spaces and Beautiful Florals

Remem­ber Shab­by Chic?  It was a move­ment start­ed over 30 years ago that turned into a way of life and a term to describe relaxed ele­gance. The New York Times described her slip-cov­ered sofa as a “dec­o­rat­ing equiv­a­lent of a peas­ant blouse and worn jeans.” Walk into any Pot­tery Barn store with its slip-cov­ered sofas and easy chairs and you will still feel the SoCal vibes that shaped Rachel Ash­well’s design aes­thet­ic she trademarked.

In this book, My Flo­ral Affair,  that “slipped” by us in its Feb­ru­ary 2018 pub­li­ca­tion, Ash­well is show­ing all the won­der­ful, calm­ing ways of easy-going ele­gant liv­ing and this time through her love of flow­ers. “She taught peo­ple that it was O.K. to be slight­ly messy,” said Mar­i­an McEvoy, a for­mer edi­tor in chief of Elle Décor and House Beau­ti­ful. The pages of flo­ral arrange­ments shout to the view­er “designed chaos.” It is right on mes­sage with her com­plete home dec­o­ra­tion pat­terns, so enjoy, sit back and relax. Because while life is beau­ti­ful, it’s often a lit­tle messy. Embrace it.

From the publisher:

Dis­cov­er Rachel Ashwell’s flo­ral inspi­ra­tions and the unique touch she brings to inte­ri­ors in her first book ded­i­cat­ed to flow­ers, a deeply-held pas­sion come to life. Flow­ers and flo­ral dec­o­ra­tion are at the core of Rachel Ashwell’s world and her designs. From her show­case rose gar­den in Cal­i­for­nia, she set out with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Amy Neun­singer to cap­ture the full-blown romance of the quin­tes­sen­tial Eng­lish coun­try house, the dra­mat­ic col­or­ways of north­ern Europe, and the fad­ed opu­lence of a Parisian apart­ment. This is the sto­ry of that mag­i­cal jour­ney, which takes us through a vari­ety of beau­ti­ful spaces large and small, some ornate and oth­ers sim­ple. Every aspect of flo­ral accents is show­cased, from wall­pa­per to fab­rics, floors to ceil­ings, archi­tec­tur­al details, light­ing and, of course, flower arrange­ments, some breath­tak­ing and some sim­ple… but all beau­ti­ful in their own right.

Flower Tool :: Online Directory of Flowers

We know a lot about flow­ers, but some­times one stumps us or we need to know its avail­abil­i­ty. I stum­bled across this direc­to­ry online last month and think its worth a vis­it. The trade asso­ci­a­tion Inter­na­tion­al Flo­ral Dis­trib­u­tors has an online flower gallery that is use­ful for show­ing images of col­ors and the names of flowers.

Almost 5000 flow­ers and pot­ted plants are in the gallery and show a vari­ety of filter/search choic­es from the cat­e­go­ry, type, col­or, avail­abil­i­ty, fra­grancy and key­word. The only pur­pose of this gallery is to see what a flower looks like and when it’s most like­ly available.

How you might use it is to find options for new col­ors — like browns or nat­ur­al col­ored flow­ers that are pop­u­lar now or some­thing nov­el like “black flowers.”

This is a won­der­ful addi­tion to the many oth­er qual­i­ty flower gal­leries online from whole­salers like Mayesh.com the infor­ma­tive site SierraFlowerFinder.com and the Amer­i­can Grown Flow­ers Farm and Flower Guide!

We’d love to know what you think about our new Online Flower Classes