Katsuko Thielke-Ikebana Instructor

Last week the SAIFD club at CSM hosted Katsuko Thielke at the general meeting.  Katsuko is an Ikebana instructor and floral designer with her own business.  Her specialty is manipulating leaves into braids or other shapes for her designs.  The things she did with flowers and leaves and even palm fronds was amazing.  Here are some photos of the designs she shared with us:

The structure for the design above was created using flax leaves.

Above is a design with a painted palm frond over a vase with tulips, lilies and babies breath.

This design was created by using bamboo shoots and tying the branches together and then spray painting them black and gold.

To avoid using tape or a flower frog, Katsuko used bamboo shoots and split them on the bottom to form a closepin-like shape.  She then tied the branches together to create a grid and stuck a bundle of tulips in the grid.

In this design, she french braided bear grass and slipped it over a cylinder-shaped container.

This design has bamboo tied together and also red dogwood branches tied into loops.

This was my favorite.  I love the orchids and the silver.  This is another design with spray painted palm fronds placed on a cylindrical vase.

To get the lines on this frond, she painted them black and then peeled parts of the frond off.

This design used willow branches coiled up and tied together.  This was another of my favorites.