Funeral Sprays

Most of the time when people want to order a funeral wreath, they often meant funeral spray. A wreath is usually round with hollow in the centre... A spray is usually a big flora arrangement made with a spray cage and let hung on a easel. There are many style of spray arrangement for tribute and is much easy to work with than the wreath. For the price, spray is usually more economic in terms of it's size and flexibility in style. Most florist would love to make spray arrangement instead of wreath since the wreath is always a lot more work than the spray and much messier... By the way, the funeral home or the chapel of the cemetery usually have easels to display spray arrangements unless the flowers send were too many and they ran out of easels. Otherwise, florist never needs to bring their own easel unless requested.

Sympathy Tribute B:

White and Pink Color
Peachy Pink Gladiolus
Pink Snapdragons
Open Stargazer Lilies
White Regular Carnations
White Spray Mini Carnations
Salal
Leather Fern
Tiki
Pink Satin Ribbon for Bow
Spray Cage with Oasis Wrapped with Foil

Sympathy Tributes

There is no special ingredients to sympathy arrangement. No matter how much people spend on the arrangement, they always expected the flowers to look presentable and big... and tall... Funeral is a sad thing. While people is paying respect to the dead, they are still comparing the flower arrangements they sent. However, no matter what flowers you use, make sure they will last for at least 2-3 days before they put them away. The visitations usually last for 2 days and then they flowers will got tossed away or brought to cemetery for them to dry naturally. As a florist, any funeral order is good order. It's the chance that florist can rotate a lot of open flowers and dated foliage.

Sympathy tribute: Standing spray A
Spring Pestle color: pink white and purple
Purple Irises
Pink Open Stargazer Lilies
White Traciliams
White Alstramerias
Baby's Breathes
Cream Color Snapdragons
Pink Heathers
Salals
Mertels
Leather Ferns
One Block of Oasis Wrapped in Green Foil
Open Spray Cage
Hays - Wrap Ends with Wooden Picks and Stick them in the Oasis to Make Loopy Shapes

Wired Pendant

I have these two glass pendants for a long time. When I bought them, they were just glass pendants, I mean there is not even one hole in the glass that I can string anything though... Kind of disappointed when I bought it, because I though they were glass beads with holes.... but no... Anyway, on Friday I was too bored and bought 2 beading magazines at Wal-Mart to read. It was Bead& Button - Feb2009 page 86 about Lilian Chen's work that inspired me that even just a plain non-setted stone you can still set it with plain wire... so I finally make the 2 glass things into pendants... with wires... lol Thanks a lot Lilian~

www.beadandbutton.com

Feb 2009 Issue89

Silk Flower Cube Arrangement

Silk flower arrangements can last forever as long as you can maintain it clean and don't break the container... This is made for one of my regular customer. She only order silk flower arrangements. For Xmas, Thanksgiving she always order new arrangements (although I don't know what she did with the old one...) From time to time, she also order a lot of coffee table low-look cube arrangements... (I always wonder how many coffee table she have at home or office that she need that many...) Anyway, silk arrangement is no different from fresh. Just get the container ready, stick/glue the dry foam in and the start cutting your silk flowers and glue them in. (only use WIRE CUTTER to cut your silk flowers... DO NOT USE scissors) I often have to glue them with the glue from the glue pan (for big arrangements) or glue gun (for smaller one). In this one, I got the glass cube, and stick the dry foam in (with the help of the anchor pins and sticky clay). However, I want to put some small pebbles in between the glass and foam; I have to trim the foam smaller and leave at least 1cm between the gap to fit the pebbles. When cutting the foam, I always leave at least 0.5" on top of the container so that I have room to stick the flowers on the side to cover the edge and make it into a full ball look. From time to time, I also need to glue some moss on the foam to cover the foam from being seen in the arrangement. But for this, since it's a full look one, most of the empty space were covered by flowers or artificial leaves. So I didn't stick any moss on it. Where to get the artificial leaves? They are the leftover foliage from the silk flower stems I used in the arrangement. Just wire them or stem them with wooden picks or metal stemming machine. You will have lots of silk leaves to use~

Yellow+Pink

People tend to order arrangements with yellow and pinkish purple mixtures when it's close to spring time. Although now it's still snow and stormy outside, we need to look at something in bright and cheerful colors such as flower arrangements with lots of yellow and pink~

This arrangement is actually for sympathy...

However, it could be multipurpose...

Glass Vase

Leather Ferns

Yellow Tiger Lilies

Yellow Roses - Gold Strike

Pink Snapdragons

Pink and Cream color Stocks

Yellow Solid Asters

Yellow and Pink Daisies

Pink Wax Flowers

Blue+Pink+Yellow

Just something I made this morning for delivery. Arrangement in a glass cube. Glass cube arrangement seems to be a trend now for floral design now. More of a modern contemporary look.

Arrangement here:

Glass Cube (I used 4-1/2" square cube here)

Blue Hydrangeas

Blue Irises

Pink Stargazer Lilies

Yellow Tiger Lilies

Purple Statics

Salal Leaves

Presentation Bouquet - deal with the Open Flowers

One thing the florist always worries about is the flowers open too quickly before they got sold. It depends on the variety of the flower, environment, temperature or the quality and the maturity of the product. For example, there are so many different variety and color of the roses. Some of fast opener; some are slow opener. Some open big and wide; some open in funny shape or just open a bit. If the rose bud got harvest before maturity, it will stay as a bullet, and will not open. If the roses don't get stored in fridge but room temp, it will open up fast. But for those do open up wide and only have a few days of vase life, what do a florist usually do with them? There are couple ways. If there are funeral orders, the open flowers are great for showing, especially for funeral arrangements. Some florists will mix the good-condition open flowers in regular arrangement and leave the rest of the ugly open flowers. Some will bring them home to enjoy the open flowers themselves if they didn't get sold. But there is one way to sell the open flowers fast. It is to package them in beautiful wrapping into a presentation bouquet. If you have a open display fridge, these pre-made bouquets are hot sellers. Popular wrapping materials can be found anywhere. Just be creative: fabric wrap, mesh, real fabric, trims, feathers, ribbons, hays, felts, papers, tissues and etc... Just wrap them like a nice looking present that when people look at it, they will want to get it for their love one~ Packaging is always important for retail~

Ambiance Roses presnetation bouquet:

16 Open Roses (Yellow with Red Tip - Ambiance)

Salal Leaves

Artificial White Feather - scarf form (just loop and tuck around the finished hand-tie rose bouquet)

Wet Oasis

Clear Cellophane (handtie roses -> stuck the roses in wet oasis -> wrap oasis with cello to prevent water leak)

Some peach color wax tissues

Yellow fabric wrap

Yellow Satin Ribbon -> for bow

Economy Crisis V.S. Valentine's Day

In the past few years, I'd noticed the trend of flower sales drop during Valentine period. What is the Valentine period? Usually it's the week from February 7 to Valentine's Day on 14th. Usually, the whole week will be as busy as hell. People ordering flowers through the phone; Internet orders shooting out of the printer till the paper is out; lots of walk in inquiries and roses pre-ordering. But this year is kind of weird. People don't tend to start ordering till the 2 days before Valentine's Day. It seems that people thought about not to spend at the beginning but at the end they feel that they still need to spend on flowers/roses for Valentine... It's kind of sad that to see the retail industry volume had dropped big time. Although you can say that on the 13th and the 14th, flower shop is the most popular store out of all retails. but whatever been made over these 2 days were used to cover the expenses during the dead month of January... Anyway, so far it seems to be a smooth Valentine for most of the shops. No major crises had happens in the industry and the weather had permitted for most of the deliveries. In the past few years, people had choose to pick up flowers in store more often than have them delivered. Our delivery orders had decreased about 50% from last year; but the pick up orders had increased. From the sudden increase of dramatic walk-in sales on 13th and 14th, you can feel the panic and the stress from people looking for flower shops and see if they still have roses available. We ordered about 2500 roses (75% red, others are mixed color), red color were sold out at 5pm, one hour before we closed the store. I know some other store were out at 2pm since they didn't stock up too crazy. However, the spending power has dropped big time this year. More single, 2/3-roses or mixed bouquet sales than dozen roses sale. People would rather spend on dozen tulips more than dozen roses~ Economy crises do have a big impact on the flora industry. It's the global issue that the demand on gift giving items had decreased. On flora industry, it affects on quality and selection of fresh flower supplies, increased cost of shipping and less flora suppliers to choose from if more suppliers can not survive through this economy crises. Hopefully the situation will get a bit better in the next few years.

Red cube vase arrangement with Grass Heart:

Red roses - Forever Young
Hot pink asters
Variegated Pitt
Salal
Lily Grasses+Bear Grasses
Oasis for Fresh
Red Glass Cube

Get Married in Caribbean

On Friday I have to make a small wedding bouquet for a lady who work at flight center. She is going to get married in Caribbean. I asked her, why you are ordering fresh bouquet instead of artificial. You cannot possibly bring it through Canadian Custom XD. She said she got everything planed out at the resort oversea. The fresh bouquet is just for her to bring to a small reception in Toronto before they fly down to resort~ She had invited 60 guests; and each of the guest cost $1600... $o$... CAD$96000 for a wedding in Caribbean... For me it's the down payment of the house... LOL Anyway, although the economy is pretty bad out here ow, it's good to see people still spending money to boost economy of the world. Although I will never spend that kind of money on myself; maybe one day I will have to spend it on my daughter... on her wedding... in another 15 years... Just a maybe...


Small wedding bouquet displayed in a clear square vase:
2 tone orange-yellow Gerbera Daisies
2 tone White with Reddish Pink Roses (Blush)
White Vendella Roses
Italian Ruscus
Variegated Pitt
Small Bouquet Holder for Fresh Flowers
White Mesh Ribbon - Wrapped on wooden picks
Beige Satin Ribbon - Wrap the bouquet Stick (use glue gun)

Ready for Valentine?

It's only 9 days away from Valentine's day. As a florist, we all know it will be like hell... have to prepare grandpa's funeral, at the mean time, get very stressful from the holiday rush. Valentine's day and mother's day are the florist's worst nightmare... I can start to feel that my nose cannot handle the amount of roses and baby's breath which will trigger my allergy attack. I'm getting sick now... headache, running nose, sneezing like crazy and no energy. I really cannot tell if it's just my nose allergy or I'd got the same cold from my little one... He had running nose too... Anyway, hope everything will go well and we can have a happy Valentine... followed by Family Day on Monday. Flu Flu please go away....

-Rosy Heart-

Flower arrangement above:

Mixed Red roses (Forever Young), White roses (Vendella) and Pink roses (Sophie)

Variegated Pitt

Bear Grass

Wooden tray waterproof treated

Oasis

Grandpa's Funeral

It's strange that my first post on my new blog is about my grandfather. I just got a call from my mother this afternoon at the shop about my grandfather passed away on Monday night. When I heard the news, mixed feeling came up to me. Mom mentioned about the funeral flowers and visitation date and time... I was calm and wrote down all the things I need to do, and then told the news to my husband. This is the first time I'm going to make funeral flowers for my own family. I'd made so many sympathy arrangements for many other families before; and now it's my turn for mine. I missed my grandpa and wished I was there for him. Now he doesn't have to suffer anymore from his illness at the age of 83. After in and out of hospital emergency room for so long, finally the angel had took him to a better place with no pain and suffering. I love you Grandpa... In deepest sympathy...

Blue and White Arrangement Above:
White Snapdragons
White Stocks
Blue Delphiniums
Cream Color Alstromerias
White Dendrobium Orchids
Blue Irises
White Roses (Vendella)
Salal
Seeded Eucalyptus
Cylinder Glass Vase