Recycle, Reduce, Reuse

During the school year, College of San Mateo's floral club (Student Accredited International Floral Designers) hosts a guest designer once a month.  This month, San Jose's Kika Shibata came in to share her inspirational designs with us.

Owner of Ikebana Arts in San Jose, Kika is a very talented and inspiring Ikebana instructor.  Ikebana is the Japanese art of floral arranging which has emphasis on the shape, line and form of flowers and leaves. In the designs below, Kika used lots of recycled products such as plastic water bottles, nail polish, plastic lids and much more.


In this design, Kika took the butcher paper that flowers are wrapped in and formed them together.  She pointed out that you don't want to spend too much time on how it looks because it needs to look like a "happy accident".  Inside the vase is grass that was dyed brown and the sunflowers are in water tubes so the arrangement isn't heavy to carry.  Berries are added to give a little more texture and color and more of the grass is used to create more energizing lines.

 This design started with a old manzanita branch which by itself was beautiful.  She wove oak, pomegranate branches, berries and grape vines into the branch and then added bright hello mums for a pop of color.

 This design was my favorite.  In a flat dish, there are three kenzans (or frogs).  The hydrangeas are used to cover the kenzans.  You can't tell from this pictures, but the hydrangeas have a touch of gold sprayed into them to give them some extra flare.  She then took umbrella plant from her garden, bent it in half and placed it in clear plastic container lids that she had melted with candles.  It really created a neat effect and had all of us "oohing" and "aahing".

This was another fun and clever design which used plastic water bottles cut into spirals and painted with the remnants of her nail polish collection.  Four red roses accented the color nicely and created a stylish but simple design, perfect for any occasion.

 In San Jose there is a neat place called RAFT or Research Area for Teaching.  People donate all sorts of random things that teachers can go and buy and create art projects with.  In this design, the tall black vase is covered with film separators that came in a bundle and Kika cut into pieces.  She then added baby's breath, silver painted leaves and a single peach rose for some color.

 This design has three curly willow branches attached together.  The red is wax coated tissue paper that is glued onto the branches.  Add a sunflower and those beautiful leaves and you have a very unique design.

In a couple weeks, I will be learning the Ikebana technique.  I only hope I can get somewhat close to the beautiful works of art Kika created for us.  She was definitely a great inspiration!