Blue Ribbon for Bridal Bouquet Design

Exciting news!

After entering a design contest with nine other contestants, I walked away with 1st place. The design was to be a bridal bouquet designed with lime green and one other color.

I chose to make a purse design out with an aluminum wire handle, metallic wire and bouillon wire. The purse base was designed by layering flattened hydrangea florets. I used Rosita Vendela pink roses with accents of pink hyacinths. The lime green flowers consisted of green hypericum berries, and button pompons.

Design Competition

Okay, it took a while, but I'm finally posting the design competition results.
I placed 2nd, which was awesome for me. What an experience.

It's like Iron Chef for florists. Essentially, we walked into a room that had tables set-up with supplies and buckets of flowers. The sympathy design was to come up with an arrangement to adorn a cremation urn. The wedding design; well, we were given a faux cake to design. And our original piece was of our own choosing. they had containers to choose from and we could use whatever flowers we wanted. The permanent botanical was something we had to bring with us.

Needless to say this was an eye-opening experience. I can't remember the last time I had been under such pressure. We had two hours to complete everything. I completely flaked on the cake design, which should have been my best piece. I think that being short on time made me overthink my design and under perform. This gave me some great opportunities to get some constructive criticism on my work, especially under pressure. I know, given the opportunity again, that I would concentrate on working faster.

The other bright spot of the evening was winning the Teleflora scholorship to their design center. Out of many applicants in our unit (D.C., Maryland, & Virginia) the application were sent to headquarters and chosen by them as to who would win an all expenses paid trip to their design center for the class of my choice in 2009. I never would have dreamed that I would win this trip! I can't wait for them to post the class schedule for 2009. I'll keep you updated on which class I choose.

Upcoming Competition

Well, tomorrow is a big day for me. I am one of three competitors in the Annual Capital Cup Competition. We have competitions at three times during the year and each one has one winner. I was one of those winners in March. So, tomorrow the three winners meet at one location and bring a permanent botanical arrangement they have designed. It is a holiday theme. Mine is done in a contemporary feel (I'll post a photograph later). Then we'll have what's called a "surprise package" competition where we are told that we will design a wedding piece, a sympathy piece and a designers choice. We can only bring our toolbox. We will be given a half hour to go into the room and see the flowers, containers, accessories, etc. and have that time to sketch ideas. They will tell us spefically what types of wedding pieces or sympathy pieces we can do: for instance, a wedding piece can be a wearable piece like a corsage or head-wreath, bridal bouquet, or even a flower girls piece. The sympathy piece could be a standing easel spray, or table arrangement.

We'll have two hours to produce all three pieces and then we'll be judged on principals and elements of design, mechanics. I'll give you the categories after the competition.

The winner gets to do the design show next year in October focusing on the Christmas holidays. This show is in front of all the Teleflora shops in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area. Boy, would I love to do that!

So, I'll take all the prayers I can get. I'll post pics and stats after the competition. Stay tuned!!