London 2012 Olympic Ceremony Bouquets

by Kit Wertz

Medal Ceremonies in London

By now you’ve prob­a­bly seen a few medal cer­e­monies for the win­ners at the 2012 Sum­mer Olympics. Have you noticed the cute lit­tle posies that each Gold, Sil­ver and Bronze Medal­ist receives? Here are a few facts about the flow­ers and green­ery used and how to make one your­self with no Olympic train­ing required.

Jane Packer’s Legacy of Flowers

Leg­endary florist Jane Pack­er passed away last year, but her lega­cy lives on dur­ing the Lon­don Olympics. The flo­ral com­pa­ny that bears her name was award­ed the win­ning design for the cer­e­mo­ny bou­quets that each Olympic medal­ist will receive dur­ing the 2012 games.

All the flow­ers fea­tured in the bou­quet will be grown in Great Britain and floristry stu­dents from around the coun­try will make the 4,400 vic­to­ry bou­quets for each cer­e­mo­ny. (Pho­to by JanePacker.com.)

Floral Symbolism in the London Olympic Bouquet

From JanePacker.com:

“The Vic­to­ry Bou­quet was designed by our cre­ative direc­tor, Susan Lap­worth, to reflect the ener­gy and vibran­cy of the Lon­don 2012 Games. The bou­quet is sec­tioned into bold­ly coloured quad­rants to mir­ror the 2012 logo. These are sep­a­rat­ed by typ­i­cal British food ingre­di­ents which also pro­vide an eclec­tic fragrance.”

How to Make an Olympic Bouquet — London 2012

The 2012 Lon­don Olympic Cer­e­mo­ny bou­quets are made using a hand-tied tech­nique. We show you, step-by-step, how to cre­ate a clas­sic hand-tied bou­quet in our flo­ral design DVD — avail­able for sale at shop.flowerduet.com. We are offer­ing a 20% dis­count in hon­or of the 2012 Olympic games for all of August 2012.

Here are the num­ber of stems for each flower you’ll need to recre­ate these bou­quets and some notes on types of ros­es you can use to recre­ate the look. Enjoy watch­ing the games and the medal ceremonies.

Flower Recipe for the 2012 Olympic Bouquet:

3 Pink Rose Stems — Sub­sti­tute “Aqua” with “Aer­o­bic” or “Light Orlan­do” roses.

3 Yel­low Rose Stems — Sub­sti­tute “Illios” with “Gold Strike” or “Niki­ta” roses.

3 Orange Rose Stems — Sub­sti­tute “Marie Claire” with “Orange Unique” or “Sari” roses.

3 Green Rose Stems — Sub­sti­tute “Wim­ble­don” with “Lim­bo,” “Green Tea,” or “Jade” roses.

12–15 Eng­lish Laven­der Stems

6 Rose­mary Stems

6 Apple Mint Stems (NOTE: Some Mint tends to wilt quick­ly. Make sure you find out from your grow­er how long it will last out of the water.)

9 Wheat Stems

TIP: Group each rose set by bundling them with a small rub­ber band before adding them to the bou­quet. This method helps keep the “col­or-blocked” stems in place when you are cre­at­ing a hand-tied bouquet.

Yellow Floral Trend Seen in Current Wedding Season

by Casey Schwartz

We are heav­i­ly into the wed­ding sea­son and three of the last four wed­dings have fea­tured a new col­or com­bo — yel­low and gray! The yel­low col­or can be soft and but­tery or vibrant like the August sun­shine. The gray comes from plants like Dusty Miller, Suc­cu­lent rosettes, and Scabiosa pods. This month, we are fea­tur­ing a vari­ety of ideas to incor­po­rate yel­low into your sum­mer bou­quets or home dec­o­ra­tion. Don’t for­get to check out our Pin­ter­est boards for more ideas on how to have fun with yel­low florals.

Here is a recent wed­ding where the bride want­ed us to inte­grate this plate-sized white pop­py into the bou­quet. We also used Peach Finesse Ros­es, Scabiosa, Dusty Miller, Astilbe, Bil­ly Balls and white spray roses.

Yel­low flow­ers that always go well togeth­er and that you can pur­chase all year long include this col­lec­tion of (from left to right): Sun­flow­ers, Mums, Sol­ida­go, and Roses.

Movies We Love About Florists

by Kit and Casey

It’s August…it’s hot… and when we relax, we love a good movie that fea­tures beau­ti­ful flow­ers. Yes, sounds crazy that we would even want to look at more flow­ers — as if we can­not get enough every day! But, we thought it would be fun to list some of our favorite movies that fea­ture florists as the main char­ac­ter. What fol­lows is lots of pret­ty pic­tures of flo­ral shops and florists who look way too gor­geous all the time (we are talk­ing about you, Ash­ton and Jennifer).

So sit back, relax and enjoy the flow­ers. Of course, we had to include “Sey­mour” — the luck­less florist from the great musi­cal com­e­dy Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors. We love the catchy theme song from this musi­cal and total­ly for­got the movie fea­tured Steve Mar­tin as the crazy den­tist! This is a great movie for pop­corn. “Feed me, Seymour!”

Valentine’s Day (2010)

Packed with the hot stars of today includ­ing Jes­si­ca Alba, Julia Roberts, Queen Lat­i­fah, Anne Hath­away, Jen­nifer Gar­ner, Patrick Dempsey, George Lopez, and Bradley Coop­er, we chose this movie by direc­tor Gary Mar­shall because of hunky florist, Ash­ton Kutch­er. What is not to love about that? This is one of those movies that has many sto­ries going on at the same time and some of them inter­twine. It’s easy to watch because all the stars are so like­able and of course, we get to see lots of flow­ers dur­ing the movie.

Love Happens (2009)

Love Hap­pens

Jen­nifer Anis­ton plays a gor­geous and well-put togeth­er florist who meets Aaron Eck­hart’s char­ac­ter in the hotel where she is con­tract­ed to pro­vide the lob­by and pub­lic area flo­ral designs. She also has this amaz­ing flo­ral shop in Seat­tle. We get to see the shop all through­out the movie which is like get­ting lit­tle dos­es of eye can­dy through­out the film. Love these two actors and love the flow­ers, too.

Bed of Roses (1996)

Bed of Roses

The florist in the movie, Chris­t­ian Slater, states that he loves to deliv­er flow­ers to peo­ple, as he loves to see the joy on their faces. We feel that way every time we hand a bride her bou­quet, or when our stu­dents have suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed a tech­nique we just taught and that’s why we iden­ti­fy with the florist in this movie. We feel the same way about giv­ing flowers.

This movie intro­duced laven­der ros­es to the mass­es. It fea­tures hun­dreds of Ster­ling Ros­es. We know that since these ros­es have a won­der­ful scent, the movie set must have been very fra­grant dur­ing these scenes. This amaz­ing pur­ple rose is scarce­ly seen on the flower mar­ket floor as it is a bit pricey and very del­i­cate. Under­stand­ably, the florist in this movie cares deeply for the per­son he is woo­ing since he is the one who sends the dozens upon dozens of these won­der­ful ros­es to the char­ac­ter played by Mary Stu­art Masterson.

The first part of the movie is where all the flower action occurs and the sec­ond half is a lot of dra­ma, but it’s a good love sto­ry and it’s worth watch­ing again.

Flower Girl (2009)

Both Casey and our Mom love this movie that plays often on the Hall­mark Chan­nel. Right now, you can­not get it on DVD, so you’ll just have to wait until it airs again.

From Hall­mark: “Florist Lau­rel Haver­ford (Mar­la Sokoloff) is begin­ning to doubt she’ll ever meet the man who will ride up on horse­back and sweep her off her feet. Her grand­moth­er, Rose Durham (Mar­i­on Ross), on the oth­er hand, hasn’t giv­en up hope, and con­tin­ues to try, how­ev­er unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to fix Lau­rel up with the per­fect man. Her best friend Brooke (Brook Kerr) thinks Lau­rel is just attract­ed to the wrong men, ones who aren’t look­ing to set­tle down. Then, by chance, two dif­fer­ent men are both active­ly inter­est­ed in Lau­rel – the charm­ing Dr. Evan Coop­er (Ter­ry Maratos) and the mys­te­ri­ous writer Stephen Banks (Kieren Hutchison).”

A Very Merry Daughter of the Bride (2008)

Okay, this movie is not about a florist, but we like this actress a lot and she plays a wed­ding plan­ner in this movie. Again, this is a very light­weight movie and it does take place dur­ing the win­ter hol­i­days, but a fun watch anytime!

From Life­time: “A twen­ty-some­thing wed­ding plan­ner dis­ap­proves of her forty-some­thing wid­owed moth­er’s whirl­wind romance. Her moth­er has been a devot­ed sin­gle par­ent, but now she wants to cre­ate a ful­fill­ing new life for her­self. Unable to stop the wed­ding, the daugh­ter decides to take con­trol of it, and hope­ful­ly find a way to per­suade her moth­er this is a bad idea.”

Bee Movie (2007)

Bee Movie

Whether or not you are a fan of Jer­ry Sein­feld who voic­es the main hon­ey­bee char­ac­ter in this ani­mat­ed film, this movie still has some cute moments and fea­tures a florist (voiced by Renée Zell­weger) who helps the bees out.

From YouTube.com: “Bar­ry B. Ben­son (voice of Jer­ry Sein­feld) is your aver­age hon­ey­bee. Despite hav­ing recent­ly received his diplo­ma from bee col­lege and being vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed a bright future in hon­ey, Bar­ry feels he has the skills to pur­sue a num­ber of dif­fer­ent career paths and resents the fact that his employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties are strict­ly lim­it­ed to pro­duc­ing the sweet nec­tar. Upon break­ing away from the hive and devel­op­ing a friend­ship with an insect-lov­ing New York florist (voice of Renée Zell­weger), Bar­ry makes the shock­ing dis­cov­ery that human beings eat hon­ey in mass quantities.”

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors: Direc­tor’s Cut [Blu-ray]

From IMDB.com: “Sey­mour Krel­born is a nerdy orphan work­ing at Mush­nik’s, a flower shop in urban Skid Row. He har­bors a crush on fel­low co-work­er Audrey Fulquard and is berat­ed by Mr. Mush­nik dai­ly. One day as Sey­mour is seek­ing a new mys­te­ri­ous plant, he finds a very mys­te­ri­ous uniden­ti­fied plant which he calls Audrey II. The plant seems to have a crav­ing for blood and soon begins to sing for his sup­per. Soon enough, Sey­mour feeds Audrey’s sadis­tic den­tist boyfriend to the plant and lat­er, Mush­nik for wit­ness­ing the death of Audrey’s ex. Will Audrey II take over the world or will Sey­mour and Audrey defeat it?”

FREE Video: How to Create a Tall Floral Design using the Grid Technique

Check out the latest video on our YouTube channel

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 air 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 a Tall Flo­ral Design using the Grid Method to keep stems in place.

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

Book Review: To Catch a Leaf

It’s August and time for some light sum­mer read­ing. Before you head to the beach or lake for your vaca­tion, pick up a few books by Kate Collins.

Her mys­tery series fea­tur­ing florist detec­tive Abby Knight is a fun escape from the every­day rou­tine. She is a very lik­able florist and per­son; how­ev­er, we some­times might ques­tion a few of the flo­ral com­bi­na­tions she chooses.

From Book 1: Abby Knight is the proud own­er of her home­town flower shop, but a new low-cost com­peti­tor is killing her prof­its-and a black SUV just rammed her vin­tage Corvette in a hit-and-run. She’s deter­mined to track down the dri­ver, but when the trail turns dead­ly, the next flower arrange­ment might be for her own funeral.

If you get hooked, there are 18 books in the series so far and more to come! Hap­py reading!

Read on at Amazon.com.

Floral Design Tool: Aprons by One Way or Another

Why Wear These Aprons?

Our Very Tal­ent­ed Mom!

These aprons have pock­ets which are per­fect to car­ry tools like cut­ters and zip ties. The pock­ets are also handy for stash­ing stray petals that fall under the arch when you just fin­ished dec­o­rat­ing it for a wed­ding ceremony!

And these aprons are reversible. You get two aprons in one so that if one side get’s dirty, you can just flip it! Or, if one side goes bet­ter with the theme of your din­ner par­ty or flo­ral event, just wear that side.

Keep clean and look offi­cial. When you are wear­ing an apron, be ready for every­one to ask you ques­tions since they’ll think you are in charge (which of course, you will be).

Where to Purchase
These can be pur­chased online at OneWayOrAnother.biz. These aprons are excel­lent choic­es because they are reversible and are made of pre­mi­um 100% cot­ton fab­ric. All of them have been pre-washed which means there is lit­tle shrink­age. All also fea­ture extra long ties for a per­fect fit every time. These won­der­ful aprons are actu­al­ly made by our mom, Chris­tine Cole­man, and we each have sev­er­al that we use for cook­ing and flo­ral design.