February 2013 News

Emerald Green: Color for 2013

by Kit Wertz

Pic­tured at left is the Pan­tone® col­or for 2013, Emer­ald green. The col­or author­i­ty calls it, “Live­ly. Radi­ant. Lush… A col­or of ele­gance and beau­ty that enhances our sense of well-being, bal­ance and har­mo­ny.” Read the 2013 col­or of the year press release.

Color of the Year from Pantone®, the Authority on Color

Pan­tone® is a com­pa­ny that pro­vides the col­or stan­dards for graph­ic design­ers, inte­ri­or design­ers and the fash­ion indus­try. This year, Pan­tone is part­ner­ing with Sepho­ra and JCPen­ny (at JCP.com) to cre­ate beau­ty and home prod­ucts based on the col­or of the year. So, if you love emer­ald green or want to spice up your life this year, you can wear it or dec­o­rate your home with the vibrant col­or. Get ideas on fash­ion and home dec­o­ra­tion from Pan­tone’s Pin­ter­est Board.

Pic­tured above are bou­quets we made using Rus­cus and suc­cu­lent rosettes.

Emerald Green Flowers

There are more than a few green flow­ers avail­able on the mar­ket and most of them are more on the pale green to can­dy apple green col­or spec­trum. There are; how­ev­er, a few flow­ers and many types of green­ery that can be used to give your flo­ral designs that jew­el-toned look this year. Here are a few ideas of how to incor­po­rate the 2013 col­or of the year into your flo­ral designs.

Green Bego­nia Leaves.

Fluffy and fun Green Trick Dianthus is a dark­er green that goes well with the can­dy apple green of the Ker­mit Mum pic­tured above left and it also goes well with creamy Ros­es, Wax Flower and two-toned Car­na­tions pic­tured above.

Limes add a rich jew­el-toned Emer­ald green look to this design as well as the dark green Hyper­icum berries.

Fresh Lotus pods and green Galax leaves are also unusu­al and deca­dent options for adding Emer­ald green to your 2013 flo­ral designs.

Stems under­wa­ter can add to your “green­ing” of your flo­ral designs as they do here paired with curly wil­low stems as the stem architecture.

Green Ti Leaves offer a dra­mat­ic green look to this vase of pur­ple and white Hydrangea.

Vase Gems and Vases

Table Scat­ter Vase Gems in Emer­ald Green offer a dif­fer­ent look to your tablescape design from Save-On Crafts.

About Pantone®

Pan­tone LLC, a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of X‑Rite, Incor­po­rat­ed, is the world-renowned author­i­ty on col­or. For near­ly 50 years, Pan­tone has been inspir­ing design pro­fes­sion­als with prod­ucts, ser­vices and lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy for the col­or­ful explo­ration and expres­sion of creativity.

From their web­site: “In 1963, Lawrence Her­bert, Pan­tone’s founder, cre­at­ed an inno­v­a­tive sys­tem for iden­ti­fy­ing, match­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing col­ors to solve the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with pro­duc­ing accu­rate col­or match­es in the graph­ic arts com­mu­ni­ty. His insight that the spec­trum is seen and inter­pret­ed dif­fer­ent­ly by each indi­vid­ual led to the inno­va­tion of the PANTONE® MATCHING SYSTEM®, a book of stan­dard­ized col­or in fan format.”

Valentine’s Day History and Flower Meanings

by Casey Schwartz

Red and Green Anthuri­ums in a giant size Obake Anthuri­um like this can make a fan­tas­tic impact in Valen­tine’s Day design for a lover of trop­i­cal flowers.

Just Who Was St. Valentine?

Leg­end has it that the man, Valenti­nus, who was to become known as St. Valen­tine, had been per­form­ing wed­dings between sol­diers and their beloveds. This was for­bid­den in the Roman Empire’s army under the rule of Roman Emper­or Claudius II around the 4th century.

He had writ­ten a note to his jail­er’s daugh­ter on the eve of his last day on earth, “From your Valen­tine” as a good­bye as he would not live to see anoth­er day. Appar­ent­ly, the jail­er’s daugh­ter had been blind, and Father Valenti­nus had healed her. A fast track to saint­hood and now a cel­e­bra­tion of love for each oth­er is cel­e­brat­ed, almost worldwide.

For thou­sands of years, the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary was when the Pagans would cel­e­brate this com­ing of spring with mat­ing birds.
Chaucer wrote a refer­ral to Valen­tine’s day cen­turies lat­er in 1382 about love­birds refer­ring to the engage­ment of King Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. They mar­ried soon after and they were just each 15 years old. Valen­tines Day is also men­tioned in Ham­let from the 1600s. Poet­ry and spe­cial cards were the order of the day. Flow­ers to your true love came on the scene a bit later.

History of Giving Flowers to Loved Ones on Valentine’s Day

The his­to­ry of giv­ing your loved one fresh flow­ers on Valen­tine’s Day comes from the cus­tom of send­ing flo­ral bou­quets to pass on non-ver­bal mes­sages. Intro­duced in Eng­land in 1717 and in Swe­den in 1727, each flower had a spe­cif­ic mean­ing attached to it, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to have an entire con­ver­sa­tion using only flow­ers. This was espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar in the Vic­to­ri­an Era, but then spread to all of Europe in the mid-1800’s and then to the Unit­ed States short­ly there­after. If you want to learn how to make a bou­quet with mean­ing, check out our “How To Make a Tussie Mussie” video in this mon­th’s newsletter.

So if you want to send a mes­sage to some­one, here are a few options for you:

Pur­ple Lilac = “First emo­tions of Love”

Aca­cia = “Secret Love” — good mean­ing, as it is yel­low and seems like it is dis­guised as a Valen­tine flower

Aster = Sym­bol of love, dain­ti­ness, trusting

Daisy = Inno­cence, loy­al love, Puri­ty, Faith, Cheer

Gar­de­nia = You’re love­ly, sweet love

Hon­ey­suck­le = Devot­ed affection

Rose — Red = True love

Rose — Coral or Orange = Passion

Rose — Laven­der = Love at first sight

Rose — Red and white togeth­er = United!

Snow­drop = Hope

Danes give Snowdrops and Verse for Valentine’s Day

In Den­mark, they have a tra­di­tion of send­ing a bunch of snow­drops. Snow­drops are a bulb flower, which often pops out while snow is still on the ground. They are called “Vin­ter­glaeks” — which means win­ter joke, as they are trick­ing the Danes to think that spring is over. The bou­quet is accom­pa­nied by a some­times sil­ly rhyme and signed with dots. Each dot rep­re­sents a let­ter in the suit­or’s name. If the receiv­er can not guess the name from this clue, she must give, at East­er, col­ored eggs as payment.

Here is a sam­ple of a trans­lat­ed Dan­ish Verse…“Love’s first kiss­es are the snow-drops, Ring­ing here like fairy bells; Let thy heart bend low and lis­ten To the tale their music tells.” Signed, .….

Here is mine.

“The flow­ers that bloom this ear­ly in spring, make the birds and our hearts sing,
Buy some flow­ers and think of sweet things to say, We wish you all Hap­py Valen­tines Day.” Signed, .….

Chinese New Year Cultural and Floral Traditions

by Casey Schwartz

A col­lage of tra­di­tion­al sym­bols for Chi­nese New Year.

Chi­nese New Year is the most impor­tant and longest fes­tiv­i­ty in the Chi­nese Cal­en­dar and is known as the Spring Fes­ti­val. It is a major hol­i­day for the Chi­nese and has influ­enced the Lunar New Year cel­e­bra­tions in the coun­tries who share its bor­ders. For 2013, Chi­nese New Year Falls on Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 10th.

Chinese New Year’s Traditions

The idea is to thor­ough­ly cleanse the house in order to sweep away any ill-for­tune and to make way for good incom­ing luck. This cel­e­bra­tion is 15 days long and there are spe­cif­ic tra­di­tions that hap­pen on each day. From Fire­crack­ers to spe­cial foods, to cleaning.

Part of the clean­ing is to throw away dead plants, so that goes for fad­ing flow­ers too, which cause bad Feng Shui. This should be done in prep for the 15 days, not dur­ing. Also do your sweep­ing ahead of time and not dur­ing, as you may acci­den­tal­ly sweep away some new good luck.

Flowers Given and Displayed During Chinese New Year Celebrations

Red is a must dur­ing this cel­e­bra­tion, as it keeps the demons away. Flow­ers are used to fresh­en­ing up homes and to give as gifts for hosts. Be care­ful of the col­ors you choose though. Avoid White flow­ers, which tra­di­tion­al­ly are used for funer­als, espe­cial­ly Chrysan­the­mums. Stay with Peach Blos­som for romance and growth, Pussy Wil­low for for­tune, Bam­boo for integri­ty and Nar­cis­sus for pros­per­i­ty. Kumquats in a bowl would be like hav­ing a bowl full of gold. Kum means gold in Cantonese.

The pine, bam­boo, and plum have been known since the Song dynasty (960‑1279) as the “Three Friends of Win­ter.” In the cold sea­son when most plants are dor­mant, the bam­boo and pine remain green, and the plum is the first to bloom. These three plants are mod­els of for­ti­tude and upright­ness in adverse con­di­tions, and this type of resis­tance to the ele­ments is admired by the Chi­nese. As a result, this com­bi­na­tion is seen very often in Chi­nese artwork.
This year is cel­e­brat­ed as Year of the Snake, specif­i­cal­ly, the Year of the Black Water Snake. Leg­end has it, that a Snake in the house is a good omen because your fam­i­ly will not starve. Some signs of those born dur­ing the year of the snake are that they are intu­itive, intro­spec­tive, and refined. Grace­ful and excit­ing are also traits. These are the birth years of past years of the snake:
1905, 1917, 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001. Remem­ber that the Lunar New Year falls some­time near the end of Jan­u­ary or ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, so if you were born in ear­ly 1989, you could be the pre­vi­ous New Year’s symbol.

More Floral Ideas for Chinese New Year

In 2010 we cre­at­ed this Chi­nese New Year design that could be repli­cat­ed any year. We com­bined the three friends of win­ter, Pine, Bam­boo and Plum Blos­som and added Cym­bid­i­um Orchids and Red Ros­es for good for­tune in the new year.

Find more ideas on Chi­nese New Year flow­ers from our Feb­ru­ary newslet­ter of 2011 and our blog post­ing about Lunar New Year flo­ral design using the three friends of win­ter. Down­load a PDF brochure on the fruits and flow­ers of the Chi­nese New Year from the Asian Art Muse­um of San Francisco.

So open the win­dows and let the good luck pour in.

Video: How To Create a Tussie Mussie Flower Bouquet

Pic­tured at left is a young stu­dent in our Hunt­ing­ton Library Tussie Mussie Class a few sum­mers ago.

Casey Schwartz of Flower Duet has appeared on Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion’s Cre­ative Liv­ing with Sheryl Bor­den the past two sea­sons and returned to Por­tales, New Mex­i­co to film anoth­er set of five shows for the 2012–2013 season.

This month, we fea­ture a video on how to cre­ate a small posy or tussie mussie. Each col­lec­tion of flow­ers has a spe­cial mean­ing and are often giv­en to the recip­i­ent sim­ply tied with a rib­bon. Learn more about how to cre­ate these thought­ful and fun designs.

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

Flower Arranging Book Review: Flower Arranging

Flower Arrang­ing: The com­plete guide for begin­ners by Judith Blacklock

Kit spot­ted this book on Ama­zon and thinks it looks like a win­ner for those who want more than a cof­fee table book of beau­ti­ful designs. This book puts all the hands-on lessons you would have in a flo­ral design course and puts it down on paper in beau­ti­ful col­or pho­tographs and black and white print.

Here is a snip­pet from Amazon.com:

“In clear and log­i­cal terms, Judith Black­lock has turned hands-on lessons into writ­ten word. Illus­trat­ed with hun­dreds of beau­ti­ful colour images and help­ful line draw­ings, this book will enable you to cre­ate glo­ri­ous flo­ral designs with ease and enjoyment”

Floral Design Tool: Gentle Rose Cleaning Tool

Pho­to: FSS.com

For stu­dents who have tak­en our flo­ral design class­es and pri­vate lessons in Los Ange­les, they know we advo­cate using the most gen­tle meth­ods to rid a rose stem of leaves and thorns before design­ing, but we have found a tool that we can rec­om­mend to help with this tedious and some­times painful task.

This rose stem clean­er saves time, flow­ers and your hands! It will remove all thorns if you use gen­tle pres­sure and leaves in a way that will pre­serve the stem. Soon to be avail­able for sale in our flo­ral design class­es, work­shops and on our Shop­ping Site.