Happy Valentine’s Day with Anemones

Pur­ple anemones are the star of this design we taught at The Hunt­ing­ton Library on Jan­u­ary 28, 2017. Nes­tled in a bed of six dif­fer­ent types of green­ery from leather fern to New Zealand Pit­tospo­rum, we also accent­ed with pur­ple tulips, asters, wax flower, gen­es­tra and lark­spur. Flow­ers by Flower Duet. Pho­to by Kit Wertz.

Anemones are won­der­ful flow­ers with a dark blue face that just says “Hel­lo!” when you look at them. We’ve been adding them a lot to our recent designs as there are many col­ors avail­able right now from Cal­i­for­nia and over­seas. Instead of cre­at­ing a clas­sic dozen ros­es design for Valen­tine’s Day, con­sid­er using some local­ly sourced flow­ers like green­house tulips from Cal­i­for­nia and also local­ly grown won­der­ful anemones!

White Pan­da anemones grace this white design from our Jan­u­ary Win­ter White design class we held at our flo­ral design stu­dio in Tor­rance. This also fea­tures hydrangea, ranun­cu­lus, lisianthus, dusty miller, euca­lyp­tus, sea hol­ly and a bur­gundy astran­tia to add some dra­ma. Flow­ers by Flower Duet. Pho­to by Kit Wertz

What’s not to love about this per­fect pur­ple anemone?

Wedding Flower All-Day Workshop — March 21, 2017

On Tues­day, March 21, 2017, we will hold our first all-day work­shop con­cen­trat­ing on wed­ding flo­ral design. Each stu­dent will cre­ate a hand-tied bou­quet, cen­ter­piece and per­son­al flow­ers includ­ing cor­sage and bou­ton­niere. All stu­dents will be treat­ed to break­fast and lunch and have their work pho­tographed by a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er on site.

In addi­tion to the hands-on work, we offer an exclu­sive look into gar­lands and flo­ral sprays and how to over­come the chal­lenges of hang­ing these types of com­mon wed­ding dec­o­ra­tions on a vari­ety of Chup­pahs, arch­es, per­go­las and gazebos.

What’s Included:

All-day design work­shop com­bines all our wed­ding flo­ral design class­es into one day + bonus arch and gar­land application!

Host­ed in our spa­cious flo­ral and pho­to design stu­dio in the South Bay of Los Ange­les, California.

Dig­i­tal pro­fes­sion­al pho­tos of your work with a bride mod­el hold­ing your bou­quet flowers.

We plan to run the sem­i­nar twice: March 21, 2017 and Octo­ber 4, 2017.

All-day flo­ral design work­shop begins at 9 a.m. and ends at 5:30 p.m.

Includes pas­try break­fast, catered lunch & all flow­ers, vas­es and tools.

Class size lim­it­ed to 12 students.

Cost is $625 per student.

[but­ton link=“http://shop.flowerduet.com/Wedding-Workshop_c_18.html” linking=“new-window” size=“big” type=“simple” title=“All-Day Wed­ding Work­shop Reser­va­tions” text_color=“ffffff” bg_color=“992372”]Reserve Your Seat Today![/button]

What You’ll Learn

Work with American Grown Flowers, Garden Roses, Orchids, Succulents and more!

Learn more at our Wed­ding Work­shop page

Our all-day work­shop offers each stu­dent a chance to make a bou­quet, cen­ter­piece, cor­sage, bou­ton­niere and learn how to work with gar­lands and sprays on dif­fi­cult to hang arch­es and per­go­las. Even if you are not inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing wed­ding flow­ers, this work­shop will be a bonus for any­one who wants to learn some tricks and tech­niques for work­ing with fresh pre­mi­um flow­ers like gar­den ros­es, peonies, anemones, tulips, hydrangea, pro­tea and more. We will be work­ing with over 50 dif­fer­ent types of flow­ers and green­ery for this workshop.

The Special Event in Long Beach

“Haute Doki­ma­zo” at The Spe­cial Event 2017 in Long Beach from RQ Plan­ning of Mex­i­co City and San Francisco.

Joe Mineo called on Flower Duet for some assis­tance for the Spe­ical Event in Long Beach. We pro­vid­ed a short-term ware­house for all the items he used in his hour and a half demon­stra­tion at The Spe­cial Event in Long Beach on Jan­u­ary 10, 2017.

Joe Mineo gives his demon­stra­tion work­shop at The Spe­cial Event in Long Beach in 2017. Casey helped with hous­ing and trans­port­ing all the sup­plies to the event and then was able to place a few flow­ers for one of the tables.

Graph­i­cal cir­cles cre­at­ed a dra­mat­ic back­drop for part of Joe Mineo’s demon­stra­tion. These were flex­i­ble fly­ing discs that were con­nect­ed to cre­ate this cur­tain effect.

Anoth­er cool Joe Mineo design from TSE fea­tur­ing torch ginger.

Part of Joe Mineo’s demon­stra­tion at TSE in Long Beach in Jan­u­ary 2017. Casey helped place some flow­ers on this dis­play for the demo.

Joe Mineo Designs at TSE in Long Beach.

The Spe­cial Event is tout­ed as the industry’s largest tradeshow and con­fer­ence for event pro­fes­sion­als. It boasts access to con­nect with over 5,000 event col­leagues, exhibitors, and men­tors. We espe­cial­ly liked the booth dis­plays by Blue­print Stu­dios.

One of the many won­der­ful dis­plays at The Spe­cial Event. This one was called “Indus­tri­al Hawai­ian” by MC&A Hawaii. Pho­to by Kit Wertz

There were over 100 edu­ca­tion ses­sions and options to browse through thou­sands of prod­ucts on the exhib­it hall floor.

Neato drap­ing ideas from The Spe­cial Event. Pho­to by Kit Wertz.

Flower Duet attend­ed the show and toured the entire exhi­bi­tion space to see fab­u­lous ven­dors includ­ing some of our favorite local flower ven­dors and saw unique expe­ri­ence offer­ings like the jel­ly­fish jam­mers from Bil­lion Jel­ly Bloom.

You may be ask­ing, “Why attend a show like this if you are a florist?” It’s a great way to get ideas on what is trend­ing. You can con­nect with fan­tas­tic ven­dors of prod­ucts you love like we did with the Design Mas­ter rep and it’s lots of fun to eat hot fresh donuts from great booths like the one by the Rebel City Dough­nut Com­pa­ny.

Flower Duet and our free­lance design­ers at The Spe­cial Event.

Los Angeles Bridal Show with The City Club

Flower Duet teamed up with the fan­tas­tic event venue space, The City Club, to cre­ate a mag­i­cal table top dis­play for their booth at the most recent Bridal Show at the LA Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. We used a com­bi­na­tion of stan­dard ros­es, spray ros­es, white and pink gen­es­tra, and anemones.

Assort­ed pink flow­ers in a col­lec­tion of mat­te grey vas­es made for a stun­ning dis­play for The City Club’s bridal show expo booth last month. Flow­ers by Flower Duet. Pho­to by Casey Schwartz.

Photos from a Tropical Inspired Wedding

We love all types of flow­ers but have an espe­cial­ly fun time when a client wants to work with trop­i­cal flow­ers and green­ery because of the cool shapes and deep green shades of exot­ic flo­ra. We teamed up with Hol­ly Gray events to pro­duce the flower designs for a cou­ple who was mar­ried at The Neigh­bor­hood Church in Pasade­na and held their recep­tion at The Noor in Pasade­na. Here are a few inspired shots that show how to have a trop­i­cal wed­ding with some tra­di­tion­al touch­es. All pho­tos by The Hold­ing Com­pa­ny. All flow­ers by Flower Duet.

Harvest — Book by the Homestead Design Collective

This book will be avail­able on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2017.

From Amazon.com:

“A beau­ti­ful­ly pho­tographed, gift-wor­thy guide to grow­ing, har­vest­ing, and uti­liz­ing 47 unex­pect­ed gar­den plants to make organ­ic pantry sta­ples, fra­grances, flo­ral arrange­ments, bev­er­ages, cock­tails, beau­ty prod­ucts, bridal gifts, and more.

Every garden–not just veg­etable plots–can pro­duce a boun­ti­ful har­vest! This prac­ti­cal, inspi­ra­tional, and sea­son­al guide will help make any gar­den more pro­duc­tive and enjoy­able with a vari­ety of projects using unex­pect­ed and often com­mon gar­den plants, some of which may already be grow­ing in your backyard.

Dis­cov­er the sur­pris­ing use­ful­ness of petals and leaves, roots, seeds, and fruit: turn tumer­ic root into a nat­ur­al dye and calamintha into lip balm. Make anise hys­sop into a refresh­ing iced tea and turn apri­cots into a facial mask. Crabap­ple branch­es can be used to cre­ate stun­ning flo­ral arrange­ments, oregano flow­ers to infuse vine­gar, and edi­ble chrysan­the­mum to liv­en up a sal­ad. With the remark­able, mul­ti-pur­pose plants in Har­vest, there is always some­thing for gar­den­ers to har­vest from one grow­ing sea­son to the next.”

Authors Alethea Haram­po­lis (left) and Ste­fani Bit­tner (right) of the Home­stead Gar­den Collective.

Flower Duet Featured in Modern Luxury Weddings Magazine and More

We’ve been for­tu­nate to have our flo­ral design work fea­tured in a vari­ety of mag­a­zines and wed­ding blogs. Dis­cov­er Los Ange­les did a fea­ture on our flo­ral design class­es in Los Angeles.

Mod­ern Lux­u­ry Wed­dings mag­a­zine fea­tures a won­der­ful six-page spread on set­ting the table for a mod­ern fete. You can see more about our lat­est press cov­er­age on our Press page.

Thanks for read­ing & Hap­py Flower Arrang­ing to you!

 — Best, Kit & Casey