Happy Chinese New Year

Or celebrate the year of the dragon with the CNY inspired floral designs.

Woodsy Inspiration – When Ranunculus Meets Plum Blossoms

Where does my inspiration coming from?
Thinking outside the flower box! When ideas come, draw them down and create them!

Tossing and turning, I couldn’t fall asleep! New ideas always kick in when I am calm and still – usually it’s my beauty sleep time. Insomnia may bring lots of stress to most people, but not for me. I feel good when creative ideas are flowing, swirling, and collaborating in my brain. Then I will get off my bed and draw them down with extra excitement! I know it’s passion and determination!

The first design idea was triggered by one of the photo frames on my desk. I wanted to build a garden photo frame to capture the beauty of ranunculus and the movement of the plum blossom.

The second Idea is winter. It has been snowing for the last two nights and I am just feeling white birch! I built this birch container using my trusty hot glue gun.

Before and After

Love love love the garden roses, haworthia, dusty millers, and hellebores.

Can’t wait to work tomorrow!!!! I meant today! It’s 4AM!

2012 Colour of the Year

Every year the colour forecasters at Pantone select a shade that they deem colour of the year. They predict that it will be a huge colour trend in everything from fashion, to furniture and even flowers!  This year’s pick….drum roll please….

We love tangerine around here, and peach and mango and cantaloup and every other shade in the orange-y spectrum for that matter.  Here’s a round up of some of our favourite arrangements featuring these citrusy shades.

How do you feel about it? Is tangerine really the new honeysuckle??

Love and Flowers

While many are still recovering from busy Christmas and New Years holidays, we here at Garden Party Flowers have been working like Christmas elves preparing for the one of the most romantic days of the year. After all, love is our business. Flowers and love go together like peas and carrots, peanut butter and jam, or rain and umbrellas! In our studio we have been busy creating new and interesting arrangements and bouquets to help you show your love and appreciation for that special someone in your life.

This classically inspired red rose and hydrangea arrangement is sure to make anyone’s heart skip a beat.

A deep and sensual arrangement of red roses and burgundy cymbidiums will inspire passion. You might even get a kiss!

Here is a naturally alluring arrangement made with soft hued garden roses, peachy spray roses, local peach roses, pink tulips and an accent of seeded eucalyptus. This arrangement is wild and romantic, feminine and sweet.

This planter may not look romantic at first, but why not think of it as a token of your love for that special man in your life. Traditionally, Valentine’s Day means the man buys his woman flowers and she in return may cook him a nice dinner in the nude. Well, why not challenge tradition? This time buy your man a unique lithops (living stone or pebble plant) planter and the he may just cook you a romantic dinner in the nude! This, my friends, is what dreams are made of!

Valentine’s Day is still a little over a month away, so there is still lots of time to decide on how to please (or find) that special someone! We will be (like good little elves) updating and adding to our Valentine’s Day Collection until the big day. If you do not see anything that makes you tingle give us a call, or stop by the studio to find exactly what you need to sweep your Valentine off of his or her feet!

Sunshine, Puppies and Tulips!!

Welcome to 2012!!  It’s always a good idea to start the New Year off with well wishes and happy pictures.  Most people would think that winter doesn’t have much to offer in the way of fresh flowers, but that’s not true! One of our favourite flowers over here at Garden Party is just coming into season…Ranunculus!!!  We loooooove ranunculus.

We also got our first shipment of daffodils in, and we also have some stunning garden roses in our cooler we wanted to share with you.  We were all swooning over them when they came in!

Tulips tend to start coming out in December and they carry us all the way into spring, you can’t help but smile when you see bunches and bunches of tulips!  They come in such amazing shades, from the very vibrant to the soft and delicate.  Janee whipped out her iphone to do a little hipstamtic photo shoot.

And last but not least, I saw this guy sitting out in the sunshine today and had to snap a photo.  His name was Digby.

All of us here at Garden Party Flowers want to wish you a very Happy New Year! May it be filled with sunshine, puppies, tulips, and whatever else brings a smile to your face!

Our New Space – Our New Workshop

Posy Workshop

People with their posies

Wreath work shop

Looking Good for Christmas

So you have your annual office Christmas party and you dread the thought of putting on that knitted Santa sweater with the battery operated twinkling lights you keep hidden under your bed. You look in your closet, and nothing in the red and green palette is to be found. What do you do? Well here at Garden Party Flowers we have the solution for you. A few weeks ago we blogged about floral jewelry, and now we have the holiday hair pieces to match! Using an old headband, plain hair clips, wire, some hot glue and floral elements, I created these festive, yet classy holiday accessories.

The above hair clip was made using blue thistle, dusty miller leaves, silver brunia, a mossy twig and some white yarn. This option is great if you love silver!

This headband used to be white! I used india ink to paint it black and then used white yarn, blue thistle, silver protea leaf loops, red ilex berries, rose hips and a mossy twig to make this rustic head piece. This option is great if you want to wear you hair down. It is very bold and will not be lost in a crowd!

For my last hair piece, I choose a more traditional colour palette. I used silver brunia, rose hips and a single blue thistle for that cool greenish-blue accent. This would match perfectly with gold or red, now all you are missing is a glass of egg nog (spiked with the best rum or whiskey, of course)!

And of course, you need to see these lovely accessories in action! Thanks to our very own Nicola Adam for being such a lovely and gracious hair model.

Happy Holidays to everyone out there!

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

Well actually I’m not…I grew up in Winnipeg so I have had my fair share of White Christmases, and although they are lovely, I don’t miss the freezing cold temperatures and icy roads that accompany them. There is something rather magical about a snow covered, frozen world on Christmas morning though.  The twinkling snow and the kind of hush that surrounds you is remarkable, and something that everyone should experience at least once in their life.

But if snow covered treetops isn’t your thing, I’ve come up with some other ways you can enjoy a White Christmas.

For Christmas dinner, or any other holiday party, try laying your table using a simple colour pallet of white and green mixed with touches of silver and glass. Incorporating Christmas greens like cedar, pine, or fir can give you that festive feel, and also brings that undeniably Christmasy scent.  Staying away from the traditional colour combo of red and green really allows you to use a setting like this all throughout the holiday season and into the New Year. It’s more “winter” less “Christmas”.

I love candlelight all year round but it’s especially nice around the holidays. That warm glow matches the warmth the holidays can bring out in everyone.  Also note another favourite thing that comes out with the holidays, the designer collaboration Evian does every year to create these gorgeous holiday bottles.  This one is by Christian Lacroix.

Lots of people like giving plants as gifts around the holidays, Poinsettias are one of the most traditional floral gifts to give.  I much prefer the white ones to the more common red. This year I’ve discovered an alternate variety called a Winter Rose Poinsettia.  It’s creamy blooms remind me of gardenia flowers, and when potted in a simple white ceramic pot, it makes an elegant hostess gift anyone would love.  We’ve already done a wreath post this year but I wanted to include this pretty little cedar one Janee made, I loved the white and silvery tones.

So here’s to a White Christmas, whether it’s a snow covered one or not!

How To Make a Stunning Holiday Wreath in 4 Easy Steps

Enjoy this super easy video of Amy teaching you how to make a Christmas Evergreen wreath.  Follow these steps and you’ll have your own beautiful and fragrant wreath made in under 20 minutes!

What you need
Evergreens (Noble Fir, Silver Fir, Cedar and Blueberry Juniper)
Wreath Ring
Wired Twine

Live in Vancouver and interested in taking a wreath making class?

Boutonniere Showcase – Say Goodbye to Red Roses and Baby’s Breath!

It is for certain brides will always get stunning bouquets and beautiful dresses for their wedding. But it is important for men to wear matching and stunning boutonnieres as well! Traditionally, the boutonnieres are worn with formal attire for important occasions, while carnations and roses are always the typical choices. But don’t you just find they too big and the head is always bent over like it is bowing to your guests?!

In our experience, 95% of our grooms actually want a more masculine boutonniere and they want to pick out their flowers just like 100% of our brides do! Check out our boutonniere collection for more inspiration!  Make your groom proud of what he is wearing!

Black theme: unique black pepper boutonnieres with burlap. It’s very popular to make boutonnieres with blue berries, grapes, and black calla lilies.

Blue and silver theme: The thistle boutonniere is definitely better than any blue dyed flowers! Blue hydrangea blossom or blue delphinium works well too.

White and green theme: tuberoses and cymbidium boutonnieres are very unique. Men appreciate details such as the stitching around a Porsche shift knob. We love details also, see the attention to detail of this lily grass wrapped stem.

Other ideas: Mini roses, succulents, and dusty miller are also great flowers to use for boutonnieres.