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!

Modern European Design

If I was ever to open a shop, it would be a European design shop.  In European design, you generally don't use any foam to hold the flowers together.  Instead, you use twigs, curly willow, rope, stems, and other materials to create what the pro's call armatures.  When you order bouquets from European shops, they hand tie them for you so when you get home, all you have to do is cut them and set them in a vase...no need to re-arrange when you get them home.  There is an emphasis on nature in the designs.  Usually, color is just used to accentuate the line and shape of the design.  Here is an example of a European design:

Inside the vase, I used curly willow to construct an armature.  I then brought the curly willow up through the design.  The sunflowers bring color into play and the amaranthus and deflexus continues the line down the side of the container.  The neck on the taller sunflower was weak, so I made sure it was supported by the curly willow.

Here is another example of a modern European design:

In this design, I used an urn shaped container with a bit of an old world flare to it.  I then wrapped the container in a twig ribbon that I got from Michael's and used that as an armature.  The flowers include, lisianthus, a few roses from my garden, a stem of hydrangea and hanging amaranths.