Ivory, Yellow and Green Wedding Bouquet

The first week of January was spent working on this bouquet. My client is not getting married until later this year, but she is having a bridal photo shoot with her photographer and she wanted to be able to have it for that shoot. When we talked about her flowers she wanted hints of coral in her bouquet. We hadn't talked much via Facebook so there was a bit of confusion. So the first 2 photos are of the original bouquet.

The subsequent photos are of the final bouquet design as she only wanted a touch of coral in the bouquet as it better matched her color palette. While both are very beautiful, the original one adds a pop of color while the final version is more of a muted color palette, but also quite nice.

 The flowers that the client chose were, ivory roses, white ranunculus, green viburnum, coral hipericum berries, plumerias, yellow calla lilies, white and yellow tulips with an ivory ribbon wrap.

 Best wishes to Lien and her fiance!

Happy New Year... New Projects

Happy New Year! I hope your 2015 is off to a great start. I know every year for the past couple of years, I come out with great intentions of getting back to blogging and then alas, the blog posts are few and far between. As I reflect back on 2014, it was definitely a year of transitions and change. While it provided us with a new beginning in a new community, it also lead me to try to escape things I didn't want to face or do through spending countless hours on social media (unfortunately not blogging). So what has changed? I will write a separate post very soon, but for now, I wanted to share some projects that I've been working on.

The first of the year has been quite busy with orders and I'm so grateful for all the work that God has blessed me with. It's a great motivator after a very slow 4 months which is typical around the holidays.

The first image is of some wedding favors that a client requested. She decided that since they were having a lot of flowers on the tables that they didn't need the flower favor boxes. Instead she wanted coral pink boxes with white ribbon and a matching favor tag. Her colors are coral pink and grey/silver. 

 The first week of 2015 was jam packed with lots of anemones. I had one client who wanted a large anemone cake topper (shown above). 

 Another client who is an event planner not too far from where we live and she is doing a table design at a big event conference called BASH. She asked me to make anemones because they aren't in season. So she ordered 18 white and black anemones. I can't wait to see her table design for the event and hope she wins the competition

Thank you for stopping by, and I'll have a few more posts to put up after this.

Custom Keepsake Baby Shower Cake Topper

One of my long time cake artist client in Australia contacted me a couple of months ago to see if I could create a special keepsake baby shower cake topper. Her son and daughter-in-law are expecting their first baby boy and her first grandson. Vanessa is the first to ask me to do baby shower cake toppers (if you recall the baby in the baseball mitt and the blue baby bears, building blocks and baby blanket?). Anyway, this time it was near and dear to her heart. Her daughter-in-law loves penguins and her husband is a BIG baseball fan and his favorite player is Derek Jeter of the NY Yankees. 

So, she asked me to combine the two. She asked for a winter theme as she is doing a topsy turvy style cake with penguins and baseball elements on the different layers. She wanted the penguin on a sled with elements of baseball so I went with a baseball mitt, NY Yankees hat, baseball and bat. Her son and his wife have a nickname for their baby boy to be, "Mo", so I made a NY Yankees style pennant with his nickname on it. Needless to say, Vanessa LOVED it! I cannot wait to see it on the finished cake!

Newborn Headband Project...

Last week, one of my past brides who has become a friend, asked me if I could make her some newborn headbands for her baby girl who made her debut into this world on Friday. She is planning a newborn shoot in a few weeks and asked if I could create something for her. I was a little reluctant but agreed. I have never made newborn headbands so I was a bit nervous, but I like a good challenge. She pretty much left it up to my creative decisions.

First I had to hunt for the headbands. Thankfully yesterday I found them and started working away. I came up with 3 cute designs. One with gardenias, handwired crystals and velvet leaves. Granted, these are definitely more for photo shoots and probably wouldn't be something a baby would wear on a regular basis. 

The 2nd design is a pink ranuculus with green velvet leaves.

The 3rd design is a peach/pink peony with green velvet leaves on a chocolate brown lace band.

I got so much interest from my friends on Facebook that I'm going to look into offering these on Etsy soon.

Clay French Macarons as Home Decor Accents!

More and more of my clients have been so enamored with the idea of having clay versions of French macarons. They want to decorate their home with them. Obviously the real ones are just too delicious to not eat and of course they wouldn't last long as a home decor piece. So, why not have them made out of clay? 

They would also make wonderful photo shoot props for wedding professionals who want to use them whenever they need them. Professionals who offer favor boxes would love these as a way to showcase their product with a favor content prop!

I think my clients have even got me convinced I should make some for myself and display them in our kitchen!

 

If you would like to order some of these lovelies, but want your own color combinations, please see the following link!

More Custom Arrangements...

My client Melissa, asked me to make several arrangements. The first set was of a lily of the valley arrangement in a silver mint julep cup and French Macarons. In addition to that order she wanted an arrangement of white peonies and bluish purple muscari.

 She wanted the macarons to be embellished with sparkles and iridescent paints in Tiffany blue, pink and purple.

 This was how the peony and muscari arrangement turned out. We decided to use a birchwood style vase for this beautiful home decor piece.

After she saw the first lily of the valley arrangement, she decided to order 2 more to give as gifts. Each lily of the valley arrangement has 300 blossoms and 45 buds.

 Truly blessed to have clients who cherish my work and continue to come back and ask me to create new things for their homes or to give as gifts.

Replicating a Holy Communion Celebration Cake

A couple of months ago, one of my long time clients asked me if I could replicate a cake she had created for her daughter's Holy Communion. She sent me the photos and I said I could do it. I procrastinated for some time making the cake because for one thing, laying clay on a styrofoam cake form is not my forte.  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to do it and it turned out pretty well. Granted, not as smooth as fondant on a cake, but as close as I could get it with what I had to work with.

It gives me hope that I can create some more of my own faux cakes to show off new cake flowers in the future. Although if you were to ask my husband and son they would say that I was in such a bad mood while I was making the cake. I stressed about it more than you know. 

My client's cake was a greyish lavender with a pearl trim at the base of each layer with dogwood branches. She decided she wanted the cake to be bigger than the actual cake was at the celebration. She was so impressed with how it turned out that she "mistakenly" thought it was the actual cake. She is so sweet to say that she thinks that if she can imagine something that I'll figure out how to create it. I'm honored that she has been one of my clients since 2008.  I'm definitely way behind in blogging, but will share some of the other pieces I created for her recently.