Destination Hawaii Wedding Favors

A local bride asked if I'd be willing to do plumeria wedding favors for her May nuptials on Oahu. Her colors are ivory, Tiffany blue and brown.The boxes that I normally use are the softer lauhala or pandan weave boxes, but since my bride increased her order and I wasn't able to get the boxes she originally ordered, Eco-Friendly Market was able to supply me with their beautiful fine weave pandan boxes. They are definitely upscale and the quality is top notch. I love all the products I use for my finished products from Eco-Friendly Market.

A New Flower - Bird of Paradise

It's been a while since I tried to create a new flower. A good friend of mine inspired me to challenge myself so this is what I came up with. I won't tell you about the challenge until I can successfully complete it. At any rate, in our backyard where I grew up, we have a lot of bird of paradise plants. They are starting to bloom and although it's not my favorite flower, I have always wanted to try making it on my own. I painted it last night and wanted to share the photos of how it turned out.I'm quite happy with the results and that I challenged myself to figure it out. Another busy week ahead of completing some orders and starting new ones so that means I'll be back in the studio, but it also means new photos to come soon.

Magnolia Hair Flowers....

A client asked me recently to make her a magnolia hair flower. I haven't done one in a long time for a bride's hair, but I have always wanted to offer it in my Etsy shop. So, I decided to make two so that I could list the 2nd one if it turned out well.I really think 2 would be STUNNING for a bride. These are 4 inches in diameter, but I could certainly make 2 of different size, but even two 4 inch gardenias are beautiful together and not too much in my opinion.

Hope you like this latest hair flower! Just in time because all the magnolias are blooming where we live! I just gaze at them and am amazed by the colors and all their beauty!

Mini Teapots for a Bridal Shower

I received a last minute request via my website, earlier this week. The client just happened upon my work and was hopeful that I could create some centerpieces for her friend's bridal shower she was hosting. I was reluctant to take the order since I've been so busy, but I agreed to do it.She said the colors were light pinks and bright pinks, so I asked her if she would be okay with my mini teapots with bright pink ranunculus and light pink plum blossoms and she agreed.

I love these little bursts of happiness. Great way to shower the bride with love, friendship and well wishes on her upcoming big day.

Finally completed the big order for House of Orchids

I'm very happy to say that I finally finished the order for my retailer in Australia, House of Orchids. It's been kind of stressful trying to get this order done as one of the bouquets is for a bride who is getting married in March. Yesterday I spent most of the day finishing up the last of the arrangements and the bridal bouquet.The mini teapots are very popular. I guess it's because it's a great little gift and a burst of color that's cute. Here are 4 new ones that Gennifer ordered.

She also asked for an arrangement for her neighbor of lisianthus, apricot peach garden roses, hydrangea and greenery with some vines. Love how this piece turned out.Lastly is the bridal bouquet modeled after a sample bridal bouquet I made but with the custom colors the bride requested.It's been a busy day today as well, back to the studio working on several other orders that are in the queue. More to come later this week!

Working on a big order for House of Orchids

Sorry my blog posts have been few and far between. I've been trying to focus all my energy on cranking out the flowers for my order for House of Orchids. House of Orchids will be my exclusive distributor to the Australian market. Gennifer attended the largest bridal expo in Melbourne last month and showcased my bouquets, favors, cake flowers, hair accessories and centerpieces and received such a great response. I'm very excited to be working with her to expand the clay flower business throughout Australia.

She asked me to create some new pieces for her and it's a little different than what I normally do. I created a lot more individual stem flowers rather than wiring and gluing them into a styrofoam base. While it gives you more flexibility, it's a little more time consuming with having to stem everything and adding calyx and leaves to every flower. I am however quite happy with the results.
I have a few more pieces to build and then I've got several small orders and a bouquet order to work on.Wedding season is officially upon me and I'm already feeling like I need to catch up. I look forward to sharing more photos later this week. If you live in Australia and are interested in my flowers, please contact Gennifer at House of Orchids.

My Son's Angry Birds Themed Birthday Party Photos

Yesterday, we celebrated my son's birthday with his close friends and family. It was a week long affair of preparing for this special day. I started Wednesday and it was non-stop work until last night.

It's the first time I did an all out dessert table. Everything you see was made by me. :) My son has a love of panna cotta and so I decided to make a little more upscale birthday dessert table than I'm sure what most little ones would expect.It was really hard to find decorations with Angry Birds on them. So I had to resort to doing it myself. I found these awesome tissue poms via Shop Sweet Lulu and decided to make my own Angry Birds characters using cardstock that I have from my invitation business. I also love their cute milk bottles, which the kids filled with raspberry pineapple sherbet punch.My menu for the dessert table was, honey panna cotta with coffee gelee and cacao nibs (for the adults of course), coconut panna cotta with passion fruit gelee topped with fresh mango and strawberries, vanilla panna cotta with blood orange gelee topped with fresh blueberries and strawberries, mini shortbread fruit tarts with marscapone honey cream, coconut and mango financiers, financiers with raspberries and blueberries, Devil's food chocolate cupcakes with passion fruit buttercream frosting, fresh strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and a 6" Devil's food chocolate cake with passion fruit curd filling.My favorite piece of the whole table was my clay figurines for the actual cake. Granted we never cut into it because there was so many desserts. I have never taken a cake decorating class and it was kind of trial and error, but I love how the cake toppers really made the cake! :)

I had made extra Angry Birds cupcake toppers for the party to give to each child. the favors were the keepsake cupcake toppers and I put a $5 Target gift card in a muslin pouch for the kids.
Everyone had a blast. I was so lucky to have the help of my husband and my best friend who helped prepare the "real" food while I worked on all the desserts for the most part. I could not have done it without them.
I definitely give a hat's off to all the dessert table designers out there. It's amazing what you do. It's exhausting!

An Etsy Purchase Leads to a Custom Order...

Last week an Etsy buyer purchased one of my trio of vases for her friend for her birthday. She asked me if I was going to offer any other ones before Valentine's Day. I told her that I could create a custom piece for her and asked her what she had in mind. She said she wanted light pink peonies, lavender hydrangeas and peach ranunculus.The nice thing about these vases is that they look great together or all on their own. These colors and I believe flowers are the colors from her wedding so it's a special gift to herself.

I'll be busy the next couple of weeks working on orders after I get through my son's birthday party, so stay tuned for new photos of what I've been working on.

Part 2 - Angry Birds and King Pigs Cake Toppers....

Tomorrow my son celebrates his birthday with his classmates. This year was tough because he has one best friend in his class who has every food allergy. His mom told me he could have rice krispie treats with Earth Balance buttery spread as it has no dairy products. I figured this would be the best thing and it's only 3 tablespoons of butter or margarine anyway so how much could it affect the taste of a small rice krispie treat?I saw on Week of Menus blog that you could use raw coconut oil, but the mom isn't 100% sure if her son is allergic to even coconut, I thought maybe could use freeze-dried strawberries and blueberries for a little change of flavor which was featured on this same blog, but alas, those are processed in a factory that has wheat, dairy and nuts.So in the end, we did the plain rice krispie treats but in a cake pop form and for the kids who don't have food allergies, I drizzled candy melts in green and blue and decorated them with little rainbow sprinkles. It'll be interesting to see the expression on the kids' faces tomorrow!