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.

Design Show with Rene Van Rehms

Spectacular! The one word that all of us at Bergeron's thought about going to see Rene van Rems recently at a local floral purveyor. We had a fantastic time watching a renowned designer show us his winning ways especially with hand-tied bouquets. His new book called "Rene's Bouquets" has such timeless information. Check out some of the pics from the show.

Also, that day there was a design competition of local designers, of which I competed once again. The competition was strong and it was such fun. We saw some fabulous designs. The theme was to use spring flowers for a centerpiece. The sky was the limit with a $300 budget. You can imagine how beautiful and artistic the designs were in a room full of floral artists! I've chosen some of the designs that you can see from the show as well.

1st Place Winner @ Design Competition

Well how exciting was it that a couple weeks ago I won first place in a regional design competition called "Capital Cup". I was speechless. Our task for the competition was to design something for a "get well" in a hospital setting, so we had height and price limitations. Out of several designs submitted from all over the Washington D.C., Maryland, & Virginia area I took 1st place.

This was a great day not only for me, but also for Bergerons Flowers & Events! Look for the final competition with all the Capital Cup winners of 2008 to compete in the fall. Can't wait!