All in Articles
Amy Cohen reached out to me several months ago and introduced me to an area of flowers I was not familiar with: flower remedies. It’s also called plant medicine or botanical healing. At the time, I was familiar with essential oils and could speak to the life-giving effect incorporating plants into my life, so this was intriguing. Flower remedies are different than oils though, so I thought it could be fun to invite Amy to teach us a little more about this topic.
Whether someone has been in floral design for a year or more than 20 years, the stories shared when designers get together range from heartwarming to hair-raising. We’ve all experienced difficult situations, and it’s my hope that the tips below will help avoid, clear up, or settle any tough stuff with our clients.
One of the biggest things to consider is marketing your business and how to get your name out there! When you’re a new floral pro, it can be challenging to jump into marketing via social media and publishing, but something simple you can do to introduce yourself to the wedding industry is to network with other vendors in your community. Vendors can include event venues, photographers, planners, caterers, DJs, and even other florists. Again, this may seem like a daunting task, but hopefully these few tips will help make this step a bit easier to accomplish.
We’ve all seen the trend of flower crowns, flower jewelry, and flower accessories bloom into the market. And for good reason, too. How cool is it to accessorize your look with fresh floral creations? Floral accessories are great for bridesmaids to accessorize or perhaps for that untraditional bride looking for a little wow-factor. Mothers love a bracelet cuff adorned with floral rather than a traditional wrist corsage! But how do we design jewelry using fresh flowers?
Team Flower member Abby Rice shares her story on how they added florals to their event planning business, while sharing tips on how you can do the same.
Leaving a well-established and promising career to process hundreds of roses and design wedding flowers may not “make sense” to some, but I’m a fan of a life that doesn’t color inside the lines. You are, too, I imagine. Here are some tips from Team Flower member Kalin Sheick.
Team Flower Member Kathleen and Sloan own a high-volume retail floral business as well as manage a separate wedding and events brand. They’ve been thinking a lot recently about what has made this partnership and this business so successful. It’s impossible to pinpoint just one thing, but Kathleen offers a few pearls of wisdom for anyone on this journey—or for those who are contemplating the idea.
To create an elevated centerpiece, there are a few first steps you need to take to ensure your foundation is stable and reliable. Once this is set up, you can navigate through the mechanics to create sustainability and design principles to make your design come to life.
Every year, American Grown Flowers hosts a multitude of Field to Vase dinners across the United States. These events are held at beautiful farms that place seasonal, local, and sustainable American-grown flowers at the center of each table and serve locally grown food, beer and wine prepared by a farm-to-table chef. The focus of the dinner tour is on the flowers, the farms, and the guests, which makes for quite a magical experience!
Rebranding for florists can be hard, especially since our work is so visual! Here are 7 tips to help you work through rebranding your floral business.
Becky shows the process to create different circular flower installations for your next event. She outlines how to plan to use the structures, support and integrate them. From a hanging piece to a ceremony backdrop, you’ll learn tips for your next installations.
Kelly Wood shares how she converted two acres around her house to a microfarm to augment her floral design business and add beauty and refuge for wildlife. It eventually turned into a commercial cut flower and foliage farm supplying floral designers in her area.
You don’t need to be a graphic designer to create a professional-looking proposal for floral design clients. Learn the key to creating a great floral plan, one you can quickly adapt to each new client by changing a few simple things.
Even if you haven’t heard of ikebana, the ancient Japanese art of floristry, you’ve probably seen its influence. Purposeful, feeling floral design and fine art floral design—to my particular joy—have become popularized and publicly celebrated in recent years. Those striking and sparse table designs aren’t necessarily a modern trend born of minimalism or abstract art; many are actually informed by the Japanese floral practice of ikebana.
If you have kept up with the local food movement over the past two decades, the term CSA has probably been something you have come in contact with. CSA is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture, the concept of which can be interpreted in a number of ways. At its core, a CSA is a model in which the customer financially invests in a farm at the beginning of a growing season, when sales are at their lowest, and in return receives a share of the farm’s harvest once crops are coming out of the fields. Vegetable farms often use CSAs as a business model that helps pay for the upfront costs of getting crops into the ground – seeds, compost, time and labor spent of growing and maintaining crops, water and energy costs, etc.
It's funny where a glittered poinsettia in the entry of a hardware store can take you — from "I need some paint" to an invitation to create even more space for everyone in my heart.
Freelancing In's and Out's: How to use freelancing while building your floral business to gain experience, make contacts and hone your professional skills.
How can we foster community? How can we hand over flowers that aren’t empty pretty things? How can a wedding belong to more than one couple, and be an agent of unity and restoration in a community? I believe that by the way we think about design and what we communicate in our creations, and by the way we conduct our businesses, actively knitting a family around us as we work, a wedding can serve as a public signpost of hope in a city.
Team Flower member Madelaine Jean walks through some ways to store flowers effectively if having a cooler isn’t a possibility for your business.
In reality, the floral design world can be quite overwhelming - both to designers and to potential clients. There are color options and combinations in addition to a vast amount of available flowers, all on top of various styles and design techniques. How does one make decisions with so many options? That’s a loaded question! I believe that the best way is to educate yourself and your client.
