In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends ~ Kozuko Okakura



My special thanks go to Bro Yap for sharing his experience, knowledge and expertise in floral arrangement class. We had finally completed our fundamental course after almost 3 months and celebrated with a pot-luck party. To Bro Yap and my dearest floral classmates, they saw me as a naive apprentice bringing a round centerpiece for my first assignment at the beginning. I still remembered Bro Yap commented "The shape is there but the color is dull. Put in more fillers". So when I did for my second assignment, I composed an overloaded bouquet of a triangular since I remembered the first lesson's advice vividly. Oh goodness sake! Comparing mine with other classmates, mine was so-called "over eating". My triangular bouquet looked bloating like composing a Christmas tree instead.

As we progress over a couple of weeks, I grew and learnt a lot from a person whom only loves flowers to a person who is passionate about flower design, its detail including fillers or foliages selection, pleasant color combination and I enjoy every weekend composing a few bouquets of flowers! Since I blog about floral arrangement, my goal includes ensuring the facts shared are as accurate as possible. Learning about flowers and plants also takes place like a botanist! I am also more observant when I have my evening jog at the public park. Even when I stop at traffic light junction, I look at the plants surrounding and thought of how they can be used in my floral arrangement! Some of my friends even said I am crazy about flowers when I skipped my lunch and went to book shop to find floral arrangement reference instead.

Honestly speaking, I discover the artistic talent within myself. I have yet to verify whether I was born with or it was cultivated by co-incidence. If my right brain neurons could speak, I guess they must be very happy that I am not isolating them anymore. Or perhaps, they could be complaining that I always insist them to work over time?

As most of you are aware, floral arrangement is an expensive hobby. To live within our means, I have to be a bit frugal and innovative to experiment. For instance, buying a lovely clay flower bowl can be very costly. Instead, I searched for a plastic ware from 'Hot Market'. Then, get some nice gift papers to decorate and it turned out to be a lovely container! Two ice-cream containers were also used before as the bowl for my garden arrangement and nobody noticed until I revealed! Or look for sale item. If you have plenty of space at backyard, plant some foliage like Gold-dust Dracaena or Asparagus Macowanii. You may use them at no cost but they need your tender loving care in return!

For flowers, I am learning to get fresh flowers in bulk and if being taken care well, they can last for a couple of weeks. For advanced floral designer, I believe their aim is getting fresh, lovely and pleasant colored combination of flowers, then they will go back and think of the design. For a beginner, go to the wholesalers with a few designs in mind may help. In case the flowers of choice that are not available, search for next combination. From my experience, I always buy all the flowers from same shop as it does not mean the next shops will have what we are looking for as well.

Moving forward, I am intending to share my personal floral design series to polish my floral arrangement skill. I also hope this will motivate myself to keep on blogging about floral arrangement. Please share your advice and help me to improve. For the floral designer wannabe, if I can do it, you can do it too my friend! There is no secret if you have 'passion' and 'practice'! Good luck!

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Comments (4)

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written by viona , October 28, 2010

hi, may i know where you take the flower arrangement class in penang?

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written by Shirley T , November 03, 2010

Hi Viona, I attended the class at Sariputta - Mahindrama Buddhist Temple at Kampar Road, near Han Chiang High School. You may check out at the temple if the class is available.

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written by Monica , January 23, 2011

Hai,
Your floral arrangements are very creative and very inspiring. Keep it up. I have bookmarked this site for reference.
Thanks

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written by Shirley T , January 24, 2011

Monica, Happy to hear your words. And thank you for your feedback

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