Gardenias, gardenias, and more gardenias!

The last couple of weeks I have been making lots of gardenias for different orders. Most of them for favor boxes, bouquets and hair flowers. One of my orders is for a couple celebrating their 10 year wedding anniversary. They have been going to the Big Island every year for the last 10 years and had decided that this year they would do a vow renewal during their stay. Lisa contacted me to ask if I could make a small bouquet, hair flower, favors and some abaca envelopes with the gardenia flower to house the announcement about their vow renewal and that it would be webcast for their family and friends to watch and be part of their special day.

Lisa and I had a slight disconnect about the color sage, but she decided that for 10 of the favors she ordered she was fine with the color and didn't want me to switch it all. However for the bouquet and subsequently she ordered 5 additional favor boxes, she wanted the lime green and purple rather than the sage/celadon of the original favors. 

I also had another order of 40 favors inspired by favors I did several years ago. Gardenias again with sage, ivory and champagne gold.

3 more bouquet orders, a wedding details print order, a wholesale hair flower order and some smaller flower orders to finish before vacation.

Gardenia Bouquet for a Bridal Photoshoot

I'm super excited about this bouquet. Yes, it is a just a simple but elegant all gardenia wedding bouquet, but it's because of my client and her photographer! You probably recall the awesome photo of this bride and groom, compliments of Critsey Rowe! The bride contacted me on a Tuesday, the week of her wedding and asked if I could get a gardenia hair flower to her by Friday. So jumped through hoops to get it to her.The day of her wedding it poured and so a lot of the photographs they hope to capture were unfortunately not taken. Melissa and Jake have asked Critsey to come back out next month to do a portrait session. Melissa told me Jake's favorite flower is the gardenia. So I decided to make the new style of gardenia flower that I've been playing around with, which I think is more indicative of what many gardenias look like.

I am TOTALLY excited to see the photos when they are released. Melissa and Jake are a HOT couple and I'm so honored they asked me to create a bouquet for the shoot and so that she can keep it forever! :)

DK Designs Clay Flower Hair Accessories

A client found me last week via my Etsy site and asked if I could make her a gardenia hair flower on an alligator clip. Her wedding is fast approaching, but she lives locally so I told her I could make her one with the clip as requested.

Anyway, I agreed to do the order and then she came back and sent me a picture of a silk hydrangea hair flower accessory embellished with crystals that she found on Nordstrom's website. She asked if I could do it and I told her that I could recreate it in clay, but it would look obviously different and only embellished with crystals in the centers of the flowers. So she agreed to the price and defined which ones she wanted and I just finished assembling them this morning.

Now I can refocus my attention on the upcoming Bridal Faire and get geared up for that!

Clay Gardenia Hair Flower Featured in MyHandmadeRegistry.com!

I got a nice Etsy convo from fellow Estian, Dorana letting me know that she featured me on My Handmade Registry (http://www.myhandmaderegistry.com/), under the category of "My $5,000 Handmade Wedding". She featured my popular gardenia hair flower. Good thing I just posted 20 new flowers today on my Etsy site since they sold out 2 days ago.I love the idea of more websites coming up with a Registry wish list for handmade items. I'm sure you've seen Wishpot.com, but this is the first time I heard of My Handmade Registry. What a great idea!

Dorana had this to say about my work:

From the shoppe of fellow Etsian dkdesignshawaii.etsy.com her clay flowers are just INCREDIBLE! So realistic and beautiful, these flower hair pins will last forever and be the gorgeous cherry topping of your wedding day attire!

New Items on Etsy...

I'm happy to say that I finally made it through 190 cymbidium orchid favors. Phew! Thank goodness my aunt helps me assemble them. I even taught her how to paint them and she did an amazing job (she actually used to paint a log time ago, so I knew she would be good at it).

I've been teaching class all week too so I haven't had much energy to work on new things and I've also been trying to get samples done for potential clients as well. I decided that I wanted to try posting some bouquets on my Etsy site to sell and see how they do. Until now, I've really just focused on centerpieces and hair flowers. So today, I posted 1 stephanotis bouquet with crystal centers instead of the traditional pearl centers. But not to worry, I have one of those in the works as well (see below). Tiffany blue still seems to be a favorite so I decided to cover the stems in Tiffany blue colored satin ribbon with a rhinestone buckle. I think it came out rather nicely. It is definitely a great bouquet for a tropical destination wedding. I love stephanotis flowers because they are so fragrant, simple, clean and elegant.

I also posted more of the gardenia hair flowers that have been very popular. I hope to add more items in the coming weeks before my private/accelerated classes start on 8/11. Plus I have a slew of orders I need to complete over the next several weeks before we go on a much deserved vacation! Can't wait to just relax on the beach!

New Products on Etsy...

This morning I posted the new larger gardenia hair flowers with the elongated petals on the outer layer and 2 purple hydrangea flower arrangements on my Etsy site. I think brides will definitely like this newer version of my gardenia hair pin. It's a lot like the ones you see in the bridal magazines and websites where the bride is wearing the gorgeous, clean and simple single gardenia hair flower in their hair! You can always double up and have 2 if you want a fuller effect or place one on each side of your up-do or low-do too!

DK Designs Gardenia Hair Flower on StyleHive.com!

So I was perusing the search engines for what comes up on "dkdesignshawaii" and I was delightfully surprised to see a new website that talks about http://www.dkdesignshawaii.com/. It was none other than http://www.stylehive.com/! It was the gardenia hair flower from Mae & Jeremy's wedding. Thank you to Stewart Pinsky Photography for letting me use this photo! As some of you know, I decided to make gardenia hair flowers to sell specifically for the bride. They are a little more pricey than the hair picks you find out there, but you're definitely paying for great quality craftmanship! I also have designed the hair flowers with their needs in mind. I'm anxiously waiting for my supply of U shape hair pins that are made in Japan to arrive from a supplier in NY on Tuesday so I can make more!

Tomorrow I will come out with a larger version that I think will do really well as I know some brides want a slightly larger flower for their hair! Just a side note. I first posted the gardenia hair flowers to sell on 7/14/08. Since then which mind you is only since Monday, I got over 730 views for this gardenia hair flower! Normally that's what I get after one of my products being on my Etsy storefront after a month or even 2 months depending on how popular the item is! THAT'S HUGE!!!