I had a challenging and fun experience taking part in this year Fleurs De Villes show at the Northwest Festival and Garden show at the Seattle Convention center.

 I have been following the Fleurs De Villes for the last couple years and was amazed by the creativity of the designers. The floral dresses they made from fresh flowers was very inspiring to me.

 At the beginning I was worried that a white floral bridal gown could be too bland. I also had to keep in mind that the event was six days, so the flowers needed to look fresh and beautiful from the day it was assembled to the last day of the show. This meant going to the show daily to refresh the display.

Northwest florist like greens, moss, and dry materials. I decided to go with 100% fresh flowers. To make the floral bridal gown interesting I added magenta and go big. Here is a contrast and size!

Next, I needed to come up with an idea of the structure to hold 64 bricks of biodegradable Swithers-Oasis foam for the skirt. The most intriguing moment for a skirt was the white flowers on a top and magenta under. The magenta underskirt gradually blended into the carpet. I used 64 bricks of Smither-Oasis biodegradable foam to hold almost 2000 floral blooms from inside and outside of the skirt. This structure was built by my husband shaping several layers of wire to be able to hold the weight of the dress which we estimated was well over 100 pounds. He is my engineer/handy man when it is coming the big projects like floral walls or other complex ideas, I task him with.

The top and one sleeve of the dress was made of the skeleton leaves with glued pamper grass. Skeleton leaves were also inserted to the dress along with white Phalaenopsis orchids making a wave with Midollino sticks. We used more than 300 skeleton leaves. I used magenta Phalaenopsis orchids to make the hair of the bride, tying together a whole design with colors.

Smithers-Oasis sculpture foam helped me to make the carpet with flowers as well.

Another fun project we participated in was a swing “Spring” display. Every flower was designed in 3D. I love the idea of the large designs of contrast in colors. Again, every flower was curved using Oasis floral product as biodegradable sculptural foam. The swing was displayed at Pacific Place in downtown Seattle. Visitors could sit in the swing and take pictures during the show.

Photographer: SamanthaSmith.Photo
Event: Northwest Festival and Garden Show
Location: Washington State Convention Center, Seattle WA