Looks like August, tastes like August...

From Jean-Talon market last week-end... Hard to believe it's already fall.

Working on the Concordia Sustainable Foods Festival this week, then one more wedding, and THIS at the end of the month... Finnegan's first birthday squeezed into that, and maybe our income taxes...

Then maybe a little break?

The zinnia season is reaching it's end, this week will probably be the last batch... These miniature ones were sooo, I don't want to use the word cute because they were so much more than that, you get the point. The freckeled ones are always my favorite. Since next summer I'll have a bit of room in the yard to experiment, I'll be able to grow my own. These will be at the top of my list when I order seeds. I ordered a catalogue this week, with seeds for just about everything that grows it seems. I love catalogues. LOVE LOVE LOVE them.

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.

Patricia + Guillaume 2010

The "theme" we started with for this wedding was TOMATO ORANGE, to match the pair of shoes the bride would be wearing (colourful shoes are for sure one of my favorite wedding details... it gets even better when everything derives from them!).

Well, it turns out that there really isn't that many flowers of that exact hue. Less than I had anticipated... Or maybe I was just being too finniky with the colour?

I set the tone with "Orange France" roses ("Star 2000" roses are also this colour), and went with paler oranges from there, with celosia and freesia for the bouquet, adding eremurus for some height in the arrangements. I wanted some fruits or veggies in there to give it a "harvest" look, and since tomatoes would not have been too subtle, I opted for peaches and apricots instead. Finished everything off with a good measure of white, a touch of silvery grey (perfect with orange hues), and lots of greenery...

My pictures of the centerpieces (in white creamers) on location came out too dark, so hopefully the photographer will have gotten a few good shots!

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.

Tout rouge...

I realized most of the pictures from the portfolio never made it onto the blog...

So I'll be showing them off in the next few months, along with pictures from upcoming weddings. I have so many interesting and creative clients this season, I feel very lucky and also very inspired... Looking forward to inventing new things and surprising myself and others...

Cream, lime and silver...

Fresh stuff as an "avant-goût" of spring...

This bride's bouquet is from last spring, but the spirea in my neighbourhood seems like it's just a couple of days from busting open like the little sprigs in this picture. I have a few branches being forced to comply to my timeline on my dining room table as we speak... But it's so warm outside they'll probably only be a few days earlier than the ones mother nature is forcing.

In this bouquet...

Cream double tulips, white renuncules, green cymbidium orchids, fuzzy succulents that I can't identify, tillandsia leaves (those twirly, silvery things), galax leaves, and local branches from spirea, pussy willow and viburnum.

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.

Holiday workshops... The fun begins!

Fancy yourself a florist? Or maybe you would just like to impress your guests this holiday season with amazing, made-by-you works of floral art... Come join us for an evening of unbridled creativity and learn how to make it all happen.

In this workshop, you will learn the basics:

Basics of flower arranging

Green floral design

Local gleaning & harvesting

PRICES

Flower diva: 75$

Get a florist’s knife and clippers

as well as 25$ worth of flowers

Lazy enthusiast: 45$

Let us do the picking for you

Includes 25$ worth of flowers

Do-it-yourselfer: 20$

Bring your own favorite flowers

We’ll take care of tips & tools

Everyone must bring their own container:

vase, mason jar, teapot, cup, bowl...

We encourage you to think outside the box!

Evergreens, branches, accessories and basic materials

will be provided for everyone.

RESERVATIONS

Contact Carmel...

ateliercarmel@gmail.com

514.993.0041

Hosta lace

There is such overlooked beauty in nature. I think this is gonna be one of those hippy-dippy posts, but so what?

Being a florist is rewarding in so many ways, but as in absolutely everything, there is a few frustrations that come along with all the fun (it's just strange how people assume that ours is a magical job with no drawbacks, no?). One of my biggest annoyances is that clients expect flowers and foliage to be impeccable. Like out of a machine, mold, factory impeccable. They want every single centerpiece to be the same, and all the blooms to be at that oh-so-perfect not-too-closed-yet-not-too-opened stage. They come for a demo in January and expect the bouquet they hold at their July wedding to be exactly identical. And it goes on... No matter that this is only possible if you treat the plant with more crap than you can find on Fox News.

So I took these pictures for my ideal client, wherever you may be... You are a client that would appreciate bug-eaten hosta leaves. Because they would remind you that your flowers were shared with innumerable insects and other organisms before they landed on your table, between the olives and the champagne. You are a client that understands that this is the hallmark of leaves that are entirely free of gross chemicals and pesticides, waxes and dyes. You are a client that sees not holes but a finely spun lace. Because that's what I see. And because like me you like to make bugs happy.

There, you can't say I didn't warn you... Hippy-dippy.

Jordan + Mikael, summer 2009

PART 2 : TABLES & DECOR

I've mentioned this in a previous post, but this wedding was the most eco-friendly I've done so far... The flowers were 100% local and organic. Some of them I even picked myself, on the side of the road or in the alleys in my neighborhood, including the grapes, the hosta leaves, and the polygonum (the stalks that look a bit like bamboo).

It was a beautiful sunny day, so instead of working in the studio, I took everything outside and worked in the yard. Within minutes, the place was buzzing with bees and other bugs, all enjoying the freshly cut bounty. I thought to myself that if I was a bride, I'd be pretty stoked to know that the flowers we all enjoyed at my reception were also enjoyed by other living creatures, and up until a few hours before the party... No chance of that happening with imports that are so completely saturated with chemicals that no living being would go near it... Except us humans. Makes you wonder...

As well as using responsible products, I didn't use any refrigeration for this wedding. Some flowers I picked up on the morning of the event, and the ones that got delivered a day early were tucked away in my basement for the night. I have to admit I ran downstairs to have a look at them as soon as I woke up! This means all the arrangements, including the bridal bouquet and boutonnières, were made the day of the event. RUN... RUN... RUN... On top of that, all the containers were repurposed by the bride herself from her grandmother's collection.

This was all made possible by the fact that the wedding ceremony was at 6:00 and the reception at 7:30. Man, I just love late weddings... I wish all weddings were scheduled this way. None of that wondering what you're going to do all afternoon (I usually have a nap). And then the party can last all night! How can a bride enjoy her wedding (and wedding night!) if she had to wake up at six in the morning to start getting ready? Well, I suppose not everyone feels the way I do about getting out of bed early...

This wedding was featured in Brooklyn Bride, be sure to check it out (here).

Atelier Carmel on Brooklyn Bride!

Jordan, who's wedding I did this summer, pitched her wedding to Brooklyn Bride, one the great wedding blogs out there... I'm sure it took them all of three seconds to accept the story, as everything about this wedding was noteworthy. SO! Go have a look (here), the pictures are fantastic, moody, vibrant and artistic, and convey so well the look and feel of the evening...

And you can get the details from the bride herself, from the food to the attire...

Jordan + Mikael, summer 2009

PART 1 : THE WEDDING PARTY

Still to come (soon!), the reception arrangements...

This wedding was just the most fun I've had in years... The bride and groom were incredibly nice, had a great vision of what they wanted, and pretty much gave me carte blanche. This was the first time that 100% of the flowers I used were local and organic. Yay! Even the containers were repurposed, as Jordan found them all in her grandmother's basement. She also wanted something the bridesmaids would be able to hold on to and wear again, so the corsages and boutonnières were all made from fabric, feathers, buttons and ribbons. They'll look very pretty in these gals' hair or on their hat this fall...

Do I have to mention that the bride looks AMAZING? Jordan, you look amazing.

A few pictures are mine, but the others (the really, really good ones) are from their photographer, Irene Suchocki... Click here for her website and her blog...

There was a wide variety of flowers, but I predominantly used dahlias, bachelor buttons, ammi majus, zinnias, scabiosa and celosia...

Green Wedding Collective flowers...

Here are some long overdue pictures from the arrangements I made for the "slumber party" at Amber's this spring. The event was organized by Bouquet, a green wedding collective here in Montreal. The afternoon featured the work of the members of the collective, including catering, photography, make-up and graphic design. CTV came by and interviewed a few of us, including me, even though I don't belong to the group... The result was part of the Living Green segment on the 6:00 news. I couldn't bring myself to watch it, I so I only listened... (cringe) ... All I could think of was the fascinating things I should've said. I taped it to watch it later, but it got erased by mistake... Now I'll never get to see my TV debut. I suppose that's what you get for being that vain...

Thanks to Farah for the pictures, you can find her as well as the other talented ladies from Bouquet here:

www.bouquetcollective.com