Hyacinth

 

 Did I mention how much I have been loving the hyacinth?  Never mind that they're named after an ancient Greek youth who was  beheaded by Zephyr, the west wind, while playing a game of discus.

Star Gazing

I must say, I don't usually go in much for celebrity watching but I was completely charmed  when I read about Kate Moss getting married and having 15 bridesmaids....fifteen young girls all in white with simple white hair crowns walking down a country road accompanying the bride. How positively festive and romantic. 

I pulled this photo of Kate's bridesmaids  from a site that had no attribution to the photo...

Back from My Summer Wanderings

I am back from my little summer blog hiatus.  I've been traveling and it's too hard for me to work in the teeny tiny i phone format, so I'll simply say that I am glad to be blogging again and am bubbling over with all kinds of great things to share with you.  Not too mention that I think everything in my yard grew at least a foot in the two weeks I've been gone.

I wanted to start out by showing you this beatiful bouquet that Erin made for a lucky August bride.  I can't tell you how happy I was to see this picture as I was flicking through facebook in my New York hotel room. It's so great to be able to get away from the store, recharge my batteries, get inspired, and shop for goodies and know that all is in good hands back home.  I am sol lucky to have such an awesome staff.

More Wedding Flowers

Thank you Sara Gray Photography  out of Portland for the pics of this super fun wedding.  Would that we had a professional photographer to take photos everyday.  You make us look good Sara!  Thanks.....

P.S.  How cute are those shoes?

Boutonnieres by Becky

And the cutest little bouquet wrap by Erin
.

What's that expression? "God is in the details".

Good to be Back

The blog really hasn't been getting too much of my juice lately. It's been a busy and fruitful time....a wedding or two, a trip to LA to buy clothes for the store (and reconnect with an old high school friend ), our summer reset at Passionflower, art classes, gardening, a celebration or two.
But now the blog is calling to me again and I have lots to show. Stay tuned.

Wedded Bliss

I know it's not all a bed of roses but these happy couples look like they got off to a great start.

If you're getting married or know someone who is - we can help.... we do wedding flowers, we have a bridal registry, and you can find some great jewelry. But if you need help with other wedding resources, we've joined up with Moxie events on their site Eugene Wedding Planning which is a great online resource for brides. Check it out here. And go here to see more pics of some of our wedding work.

Body Flowers

It's prom season chez Passionflower. Let's just say there are few things more angst ridden than a teenage boy except perhaps a teenage boy picking corsage flowers....which of course makes me feel all warm and tender towards them and take lots of deep breaths as they try to navigate their way through flowers and ribbons etc....then again there are other times, usually about 15 minutes into the discussion, when I feel like slapping them around and saying , "WTF, it's only a flower" and other things I can't write on the blog. These are the times I'm happy to have kind and patient employees helping out.

Some favorite photos of mine of corsage and boutonniere work.....

Enjoy.

A Bride & Her Bridesmaid's With Their Flowers -

I am working on putting together wedding photos of our flowers for the soon to be happening website. Seems these photos of brides with their bridesmaids are some of my favorites..They really show that each wedding really does have it's own personality....

Unexpected and a little moody.

And these girls look extra sassy!

These ones so sweet!

And these kind of medieval and magical.

(Photos top to bottom courtesy my brides and photographers Bruce Berg, Courtney Jade , Jamie Jones, Melinda Luksch, and unknown.)

Some Flowers For Easter & A Baby Shower Too

Messing around with flowers on a bright spring morning.

HyAcinTh, 'ApPle BlosSoM' StocK, JasmInE VinE, & a gARden Rose.....

I've been buying milk from longtime Willamette dairy family Noris Dairy and they have these great glass bottles with a $2 deposit...uh oh.....I kinda like them as vases.....

Pretty.

Might be nice with some angelique tulips....

or white camellia? Yes white camellia...yummy....

lily of the valley?

Flowering Apple branches?

Or just the way it is.

Fun Wedding Flowers

Some photos I haven't shown you of some kinda crazy body flowers Erin did for a wedding last fall.

The grooms boutonnierre had a little "nest theme"

And she mixed sea fans into the hairpieces.

There was a lot going on - feathers, and eggs, and shells, and seafans, and flowers, and moss

But it all came together in a super fun way.

A Living Tillandsia Wreath from Passionflower

We couldn't have been happier when our local paper asked us to do a holiday wreath featuring non traditional materials. We could swing with that. And well since I have been mostly obsessed with tillandsia this year and since our supplier had just shown up with some of the most beautiful ones we'd ever seen - it seemed obvious what we were meant to do.

Our thanks to the Register Guard for the photos of this living wreath.....and thanks to them also for giving us an opportunity to further our mission at Passionflower of making the world a more beautiful place.

Studio Choo & Flora Grubb

FYI , we have very much been grooving on the floral designs coming out of the San Francisco Bay Area lately......(well not just lately I have always loved San Francisco designers for their whimsy and the interesting mix of materials that comes from their climate and their sense of abandon). A couple of our favorites:

The most charming and understated Studio Choo. Here's a vignette they did using brown tincture bottles of varying sizes. Doesn't it just scream fall without screaming?

And here's an unusual bridal bouquet by the design studio called flora grubb. These are the folks taking tillandsias to new heights. And they're into vertical gardening too!

Succulents and tillandsias with privet berry, maroon scabiosa, and that fabulous string of pearls hanging down. Thanks to both places for the gracious use of their photos. Perhaps a field trip to the SF area is in order. :)

An End of July Bridal Bouquet

Here's Becky & Lindsey putting the finishing touches on a bridal bouquet.

Photos by our customer Bill Brewer.

Just a Little Nothing

But what a sweet little nothing. Lindsey wrapped the stem of this boutonniere with variegated lily grass and then let it spill out the top.

Rethinking Carnations

Here it is ....the carnation curtain....in situ.....apparently people used it all day as a backdrop to have their pictures taken.....

I think of it as bling for the minimalist.

Daisy Bouquet for your Bridesmaid

A simple bridesmaid's bouquet.

Of course the florist runs the risk of everyone saying, "that looks like you just picked it up by the side of the road" , which is exactly what you want it to look like, and which is exactly what you did except then Lindsey said, "let's add the ladies mantle" and then it was just right.

Easier said than done.

A Curtain of Carnations

Did I tell you about floral design as site specific art installation?

Here's a hanging "curtain" that's going to be used as a wedding backdrop sitting in our cooler waiting to be delivered.

Her colors were apple green and white. We used the most wonderfully scented carnations and strung them like the Indians do marigolds.

They're going to hang it between two upright poles of birch with a big blackberry hedge behind them. Can hardly wait to see photos!!!!!

Searching for the Blues

I needed something blue, something wildflower, something delicate for the bridal bouquet.....tweedia seemed just right.

Tweedia that's that periwinkle blue flower in the photo above.

But I 'd had bad experiences with tweedia in the past.....Wasn't sure. Didn't trust it.



So glad I gave it a second chance.

Life In Sepia Tones

Every now and then, at work, I let myself do anything I want.....no aim, no goal, no deadline - just whatever I feel like doing. It just needs to be somehow work related. So one day I thought, "I'll blow up some of my wedding flower photos into 81/2 x 11's ". Because I mostly only look at photos when they're tiny, like on a computer or camera screen. I thought I'd make a wedding album. Well, it was not to be so. The camera place said 3 days to get my big prints back...I was looking for a little more instant gratification...Time to reframe and salvage this little excursion. And that's when I discovered the sepia button.

I started with this wrist corsage and then kept trying out all my favorite flower photos in sepia.

I was really loving it - enough so

that I took out the ever faithful rubber stamps and started stamping words on the photos.

It was fun picking just one word out of all the words in the whole wide world to go with each picture. And I wanted to think about words that described our approach to flowers.

(I got the idea for putting corsages in a simple box from Nicollette Camille's fabulous site.)

I was on a roll and having fun.

I liked how washed out it all was.

Also the sepia gave made all these photos talk to each other. It gave them a unifying element.

Everyone I showed them to at work smiled and nodded. I'm their boss after all, they have to indulge me a little bit. And then they said, "All wrong for a wedding album. Brides want to see color. Color is everything. They're depressing"

Then I showed them to my go to guy for, well for someone who I trust to tell me what he really thinks. He's my old art school friend who lives way far away in Washington Heights Manhattan, NYC (near the Cloisters). Giotto, Bosh, Duchamp, or Warhol - he's got an opinion.

So he said one or two nice things. He's my friend after all. And then I believe the word he used to describe them was "flat footed". Flat footed, I'm pretty sure that wasn't a compliment.

Flat footed, hmm....He particularly disliked this used to be pink roseball. Looks like a dead cabbage was what he said.

Okay, so what, even if they are right? And they are......I'm still intrigued by these sepia photos and I want to sit with them a while more. Just not exactly sure where I'm going with them.