Welcome to 2012!

Here we are in 2012, and Green Dahlia has made it 6 months! I know it’s been a while since the last post, but that is exactly what New Years resolutions are all about- growing, improving, blogging more…

We have 6 classes scheduled for this spring semester at Middletown Adult Ed, class sizes are limited so if you see something you are interested in, sign up!  Look for the classes taught by Catherine Epright, AIFD

Here is the page in the catalogue with the information (full color, how cool is that?) Since the classes are taught through Middletown Adult Ed, you will need to sign up with them.

Middletown Adult Ed Spring Catalog

Not only do I teach a few classes, but I take them too!  I am currently enrolled in the European Master Certification Program offered by Design358 in Vancouver.   This program is taught by Thomas DeBruyne whom I fell florally in love with at the first AIFD (American Institute of Floral Designers) National Symposium I ever attended in Palm Desert, 2007.  He was there doing a main stage program with Life 3.  I fell for his style while volunteering in the design room.  I kept seeing bits and pieces of started or mostly finished work, and many of them screamed “MATH!” to me. I am very attracted to Math, and find something about it to be irresistible. Come to find out, he started out as a Mathematician and then switched to floral design. Right then and there I knew I had to try to learn from him so when I saw the Masters program advertised a few years later with him as the main instructor I knew I had to do whatever possible to get there.

Unfortunately I did not bring a camera to the 5- day class held in Norwalk Ct. at East Coast Wholesale  this past October  ( Let me give a quick shout out to Steve the owner of East Coast- he is serious yet full of fun;  not afraid to rock a pink shirt, and it is only one of the reasons I admire him so much- he really cares about his products as well as his staff.)

But luckily Jim Martin did bring his camera, here are some of his images:

Thomas De Bruyne himself, image by Jim Martin

This was a cool concept the long , low horizontal split-bamboo.  Bamboo often splits all by itself and with a few tricks, Tomas had this one waterproofed in no time at all. As he started this arrangement I will admit to being a little horrified with his choices of color, I did not have any confidence that this would come out looking good.
I thought to myself ” I thought he was supposed to be a master? Why is he choosing those colors?”

Low and behold, he is a master, and when it was finished I had to admit that it was beautiful.  This is precisely why I continue to learn from the best….

Horizontal arrangement, split bamboo image by Jim Martin

Next up, an arrangement with “downward proportion” I feel I don’t even have to say how much I love this next piece can I tell you that the hidden mechanics are – gasp- Chicken Wire? Who knew it was back in vogue? Well, folks, it is. This is the year of Chicken Wire, mark my words. (we shall see if that is a joke or not as the year progresses)

"Proportion Down", image by Jim Martin

Some images of a very cool “art piece” that poor Brooke had to make from scratch! It took her hours and hours to make the form, but since October it has been to New Mexico and now resides in Vancouver, BC. I got the image below from the beautiful girls at Floressence Floral Design in NC who also attended the workshop.

Art Piece by Tomas, image by Floressence floral

the art piece, up close (image by Jim Martin)

A bridal bouquet done with strips of reed- very lacy and transparent, yet strong, sexy and even playful with the colors and movement…

modern bridal bouquet, image from floressence floral

bridal party "purse" photo by Floresscence floral

and last but not least, a photo Jim Martin took of me making one of our practice bouquets:

me hard at work, image by Jim Martin

and my final piece for part one, Foundation- it’s a hand-wired European hand-tied bouquet. I chose to make mine an inverted spiral (I hope you can see it from the picture I took with my phone!)

the "Inverted Spiral" bouquet, photo by my phone

over 100 hand wired flowers total!

side view

Well, now that you know what we did in the Part One, I will tell you that Part 2 is a self-practicum, and I will be regularly blogging a bit of what I research as well as what I make as part of the course.

Part 3 (cross my fingers and squeeze my eyes shut I Hope I Can Make It) takes place this May for 2 weeks in Europe! Oh please I hope I can manage to get there, for if I can when I return Stateside, I will have my European Master Designer Certification.

Remember, February 14th is Valentines Day, flower idea post coming soon…
Thanks for reading!

Cat