The smaller things...

Sometimes it's overwhelming, sorting through hundreds of pictures of flowers... They start to all look the same. To me at least. And most of the time, there isn't an interesting story to go with them.

Still, some of them are worth sharing. So I lumped together a few pictures that are great examples of smaller arrangements...

You don't need to spend tons of your hard-earned money to get charming centerpieces.

When I worked at the flowershop, all the clients with more modest budgets got sent my way... My colleagues preferred concentrating on big spenders! And while it's obvious that bigger budgets mean more flowers to work with, it doesn't necessarily mean you have more liberty and opportunities as a designer.

When you are working with very few elements, the concept has to be strong and the execution has to be perfect. It's challenging and exciting. You have to be inventive with containers. Willing to experiment with different branches, foliage or fruits, all of which can stretch you budget more efficiently than actual flowers.

So small wedding have always been some of my favorite projects. I still remember a couple I worked with almost 10 years ago... Their budget was 15$ per table, which we finally upgraded to 16$ per table. In a shop where most centerpieces went for 75$ to 125$, this was considered pretty much impossible. The result was simple and elegant, and the couple was maybe to most satisfied and happy I've ever helped out.

These arrangements are all made with 3 flowers or less, coupled with inexpensive, locally harvested greens and branches.

First bouquet as a mum...

After Finn was born, my friend I used to work with at the flower shop sent me some flowers... She new I like to do things my way, so instead of making me a bouquet, she filled up a box with a bunch of the stuff I love. She called it the Ikea bouquet, because I'd have to assemble it myself... It took me a few days to find the energy to do anything with them, but when I finally did, it felt really good to take a moment for myself doing something I love. Before I started I went for a stroll in the alley to pick up a few "weeds"... The hairy looking vines are a species of Clematis, one I think is native to Eastern Canada. A couple other things too, polygonum and some stuff I can't identify...

It's interesting because it's not colours I would've picked out spontaneously, but the resulting mix was just fabulous. I naturally gravitate towards deep, saturated hues. These were far more subtle and varied. Just goes to show, I really have to expand from my usual choices of reds, pinks and purples...

I can imagine a wedding with a long harvest table filled with these. So perfect for a fall celebration. The place mats would be a dirty shade of purple, like the hydrangeas. Place cards would be light peach and olive, and maybe a few mustard coloured candles?

I'm already looking forward to the 2011 wedding season...

Pink & purple hues...

In this arrangement...

The peonies and the rose are cultivated, but everything else is from the neighbourhood alleys. Queen Anne's lace, black eyed Susans (without their petals), campanula, veronica, hosta leaves... The bachelor buttons are from my own yard! This is the first year I've actually had room back there to do some experimenting...

And some stuff I can't name. I usually have my trusted "wildflowers of the city" identification guide, but with the renos and everything I can't seem to find it. Oh well.

Miniatures...

Some (most) of my favorite flowers bloom in spring. And most of my faves are special to me for sentimental reasons, reminding me of my childhood explorations and experimentations. Even at five or six, I had a mental registry of what grew where... A patch of violets, lilacs or lily of the valley was carefully catalogued somewhere in my brain for the following year. To this day, I can still remember what flowers/weeds/trees grew around each house we lived in.

Unfortunately, unless you work for Martha Stewart Magazine, you really never get to use these flowers in real life. They're expensive, finniky, and most won't tolerate an hour out of water. A bride once showed me a picture of her dream bouquet... It was a lily of the valley posy from Martha Stewart Weddings. I had to tell her that considering the price of lily of the valley in Montreal, her bouquet was worth about 1500.00$. She was pretty disappointed...

Anyways, this year I decided to have fun. Who cares that these literally wilted within 30 minutes, even in water? The pictures don't look worse for it. And for the time they did last, they were the prettiest things on earth... Needless to say, these all come from within two blocks of my house, from the alleys and neighbour's gardens.

In these... Cheap hard boiled egg cups from Loblaws, violets, rhododendron, lily of the valley, prunus branches, tulips, myositis.

Autumn gleaning...

Ah!

The things you can find in the city...

Magnolia branches, blue juniper (with berries!), euphorbia, rosehips, and a few books, too.

Can't wait for damn winter to be over...

Pink and orange in the snow...

Finally, pictures that don't date from six months ago. The snow and pot-bellied stove can attest to that...

Yellow at Fuchsia...

It feels like we have about four feet of snow here already, and while I admit to loving winters like this (mostly I love them from the couch, admiring through the window while drinking something hot), I am starting to miss greenery. No more strolling through the alleys snipping at wild things... It also means business mellows down for a couple of months, and the bulk of the work becomes consultations for weddings coming up next summer. So I decided to dig through my archives to post some refreshing pics from the past few months. As soon as I saw these, I felt reenergized and peppy. Lasted only a few seconds, but still!

From sometime in November, at Fuchsia. It's really hard for something not to look good there...

These small centerpieces were entirely made from gleaned materials, except the lemons of course. How I'd like to live in a place where I could pick my own lemons... Magnolia branches, blue juniper, tansy, marigold, and those silvery, velvety leaves who's name I can never remember... The containers are a sugar & creamer set from the 50s.

Gleaner's bouquet #2: Northern Ontario

I hadn't made a bouquet that looked like this since, like, grade four... But what else was I going to do while Aaron slept in the car at a tiny road stop in Northern Ontario? He'd been driving 16 hours a day for a few days straight on our way back from Saskatchewan, so he did need a well deserved nap... If just to minimize our chances of ending up in a ditch near Wawa. So my first thought, wherever I am, is to look for flowers, and I had some time to play around... This bouquet just reminds me so much of the ones I used to make for my mom when I was a kid! Even when I was eight, I used to own a Canadian wildflower identification guide (which I still own, one of my most prized possessions) where I would look up my daily finds while eating maple butter straight from the jar with a spoon (I had to hide behind a sofa in my mom's bedroom, because of the sweets)...

Gleaner's bouquet #1: tiny & blue...

Flowers can quickly become a pricey habit... The downside to not working in a shop is that you don't usually have flowers around unless they're spoken for. And this means that opportunities for experimentation can become few and far apart... This summer, I started scouring alleys/abandoned lots/parks in my neighborhood for interesting bits of green. The results became Gleaner's bouquet, pieces where all (or almost) the flowers come from around my house. I found enough goodies to keep me satisfied, creativity wise, without having to go to the wholesaler's at all. Single stems from the farmer's market, an hour each week spent "harvesting", and I was busy as a bee... I kept some notes on how things fared in water, their vase life, and how suitable they would be for arrangements next summer.

These guys feature kale, wine grapes (and their amazing little tentacles...), myositis, rosehips... As well as one green gladiola and two dahlias from the market.

Everything then went into these cute pots I found at a yard sale, a creamer/sugar set.