I had fun this month with Cosplay – a portmanteau of the words costume play. It is a performance art whereby the costume wearer represent a specific character.

Flowering your pet… or Pet Dressup can be a fun distraction for social media posting!

Our special pets ultimately can garner more ‘LIKES’ modelling our flower creations with their cuteness!!

In creating flower costumes for our mini Australian Shepherd, SWARLEY, I wanted to come up with 3 different characters for him to cosplay. Different storyline for characterization was imagined, before working through the mechanics, techniques and flower choices to complete the costume.

I created 3 personalities this month for Swarley. Costume dressup is not limited to Halloween with pets…. We can dress them up any time of the year.

Tropical Flowers and I have history……

Tropicals were my CREATIVE EDGE - I used them as the difference maker in my early years in floristry especially in competition work. In this ‘Tropical Creative’ article, I decided to reintroduce some of my early favorite ideas and techniques blended with today’s methods and sensibility to bring to life a new evolved version that may have a place in today’s flower business.

Tropical flowers from Hawaii are not grown the same way as those grown elsewhere. They are grown with Aloha Spirit, ‘LOVE’… it defines a force that holds together existence. The energy that you feel in their flowers come from cultivating in clean and pure volcanic cinder. Hawaii claims 8 of the 14 world climate zones. This tropical island archipelago is one of the most ecologically diverse places in the world. It provides the ideal conditions to grow the most amazing range of species, varieties and cultivars of exotic flowers and plants.

For this month’s article, I created 3 hand-tied bouquets using 3 distinctively different armatures, with sustainability in mind.