My Process

 I devoted last Saturday to assembling my Valentine's Day orders.  I woke up early and went to Flora Fresh and Floral Supply Syndicate, picked up my flowers and any extra supplies I needed, then headed back to prep all of the vases and flowers.  I am learning it is better if there's some sort of method to the madness so I began soaking the floral foam, got liners ready, then taped them into vases with the soaked foam.

All of the flowers have to be prepped.  This means anything below what is being seen in the arrangement should be removed to help keep the flowers alive longer.  Extra leaves and flowers submerged in water or floral foam promote rot (and we don't want that!).  I decided to use traditional roses in white, lavender, and hot pink, burgundy ranunculus, purple trachelium, fancy

 carnations, gypsophelia, dendrobium orchids, dark purple stock and curly willow.  I didn't want to put together a traditional Valentine's Day arrangement, but something that had lots of beautiful colors and rich flowers.  I found these amazing mercury glass vases from Jamali Floral & Garden Supplies.  I will definitely be ordering more supplies from them in the future!

      

 They offer a unique selection of vases and votives.  Once I got all the vases and flowers prepped I began by filling the vases in with the trachelium and/or gypsophelia then I used the roses, ranunculus, carnations and finally orchids.  I love the way the smell of the flowers overtake the room.  It is incredibly calming for me to arrange the flowers and let that be my sole focus letting go of everything else.  

It is just a part of my personality to embrace something and put as much energy into it as I possibly can.  I have a fairly competitive spirit in the sense that I want to be good at everything I do. From time to time this causes me to obsess over those things so lately I have been dreaming about flowers! 

 Here I am like a proud mama with her babies! All done!

**All photos were taken by Andy Duong.