Pith + Marrow: Beginning Floral Design

Floral design has always been such an intriguing concept to me. From far away, assembling a bouquet or table centerpiece looks rather easy. You have a bunch of beautiful flowers, you chop the stems at an angle so they can drink water, and you plop them in a vase - easy peasy folks.

Wrong. So very wrong. 

The more and more I play with flowers with Misha & Teresa (the other 2/3 of pith + marrow), the more I respect wedding florists and floral designers of all kinds. This is no joke. Between narrowing down the hundreds, probably thousands, of different blooms out there to select a collaborative color palette full of texture, variety and good smells, to filling out the arrangement with the proper ratio of flower to filler, and doing so one handed as you twist, pull, fluff and assemble to perfect grouping to cut and stick in a beautifully selected vessel. (Don't even get me started on what to put it in - glass, silver, hand thrown ceramic pots, mugs, vintage metal boxes, tea crates - TOO MANY decisions!!)

That being said, I kind of like this floral design thing. What a beautifully tangible item based off of your inspiration, that you create with your own two hands. No two arrangements will ever be alike, no matter how hard you try. They are perfectly imperfect. I'll spare you the life revelations metaphorical joy going on on the other side of this screen right now - but I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

In other news, we start our three part more advanced floral design workshops this week at Camelback Flowershop! I'm so excited to meet our new season of students, and to dig in and play. Let's see what we come up with this time!

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The Final Workshop - pith + marrow spring 2014

We are so thankful to have found two amazing locations for our first pith + marrow workshops, Chestnut and Lux. This third one will be extra special, as it will take place at the new location of my all time favorite coffee shop, Lola.  

Lola has transformed into Lola at The Yard, a coffee shop, tapas restaurant and bar all morphed into one. They offer an expanded brunch menu, bar bites, spanish tapas and stellar coffee. 

On June 10, we'll be taking over that fantastic middle table for an evening of floral design. This time, we'll be teaching european style hand tied bouquets. This skill can be translated into gorgeous bouquets for a wedding (shout out to all you DIY brides!), but can also be placed in a vase for a beautiful tabletop arrangement. Versatility FTW.

With the purchase of your ticket, you will also receive all kinds of small bites and tapas from Lola, two glasses of wine, access to all of the tools and supplies needed to complete your arrangement, your own vessel AND some surprise goodies. You'll have to wait and see!

Tickets are available at www.pithmarrow.eventbrite.com

treat yo self.

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Floral Crowns: A Workshop with pith + marrow

Teresa, Misha and I, the gals behind pith + marrow, hosted our second workshop last night at Lux in downtown Phoenix - a lesson in floral crowns and farmers market bouquets. 

The room was full of amazingly creative, beautiful women from all areas of town, a variety of careers, mothers and daughters, coworkers and best friends. The hum of chatter between tables of strangers turned comrades in the crusade to make the perfect head piece, is something so wonderful to be completely enveloped by.

The process was slow, and much more intensive than most of the attendees thought - myself included! No one seemed to mind that the class extended beyond our two hour time slot, hardly noticing the time. The cocktails were delicious, the company better, and we were having fun! As it should be in this setting. 

Even after these two amazing classes, I'll admit the third is the one I'm most excited for. We'll be teaching hand tied bouquets, the gorgeous, wild, textural and full bouquets seen on the best blogs and pinterest boards. And an added (double) bonus - the bouquets can be placed in a vase and used as a table top arrangement! You can pop on over HERE if you'd like to snag one of the few remaining spots! 

Happiest of hump days to you!

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