Design Sponge Inspiration and a Floral Happenstance

I often begin my day with a perusal of the Design Sponge posts, which are waiting for me in my email in-box.  It’s like a daily dose of inspiration. Today, I was inspired by reading this post about Constance Spry, a British floral designer in the 1920s.  I often need to create flower arrangements as props for photos of our products.  In fact, it’s one of my favorite parts of the process … a little bit like making art, but instead of using paint, flowers are the medium. And, like art, sometimes when I try the least, it looks the best.

For example, after making my floral-design-props for some recent studio photos, I piled the extra flowers in a vase to enjoy on the kitchen counter, and they fell into a perfectly lovely arrangement … sort of lopping over to one side.  (sketched above, as they have since gone to flower heaven) After reading the post about Constance Spry, I realized that the reason I might have been enamored with this lopsided lovely, might have been due to the influence that Ms. Spry had on floral design in the 20s and still today.  The fact that I was not “arranging,” but rather plunking in piles of same-kind flowers in different parts of the vase created the loose, fluid arrangement with solid blocks of color that Constance made popular.  Perhaps, she, too, came upon her style by glancing over her shoulder to see a bucket full of loose flowers waiting to be “arranged,” and realized that they were beautiful just as they were.

And, the other very handy inspiration for the day came from the end of the post, in which Amy Merrick was inspired to create a Constance Spry-inspired DIY. (A lot of inspiration going on here.)  Anyway, I had been suffering over finding the perfect container for an arrangement that needed to blend and not distract for a photo … Constance introduced the idea of using interesting containers to the world of floral design, so Amy demonstrates a method for simply spraying a great container the color needed.  I can’t wait to go to the paint store.  I think I might buy a whole rainbow of colors to have on hand.  Watch out family, your water glasses may never be clear again!