Floral essay #23

Making time for creative play 🪻

It’s so hard to prioritise time for creative play. There’s always emails to answer, quotes to write, buckets to clean, photos to post online. It feels relentless sometimes.

But how do you become better at your craft if you never play and practise?

So I got together with another florist pal. We collated some leftover bits and pieces and Jenny picked up a bucket of spring flowers from a local flower farmer.

I pulled out my copy of Sue McLeary’s book. I bought it a while ago and I had to actually dust it off. Clearly I was long over due a session of creative playing. The book is called The Art of Wearable Flowers. I watch a lot of the videos Sue shares on IG as well.

Honestly we were humbled very quickly. Sue makes wired work look so easy. Normally fiddly floristry is my forte. But not today.

We made three different pieces: a fine wire floral head piece, a bulky floral headdress and a floral tattoo. It was fun and flexed our creative muscles. It’s also helpful to chat with others in the same industry. Things like how much you pay your freelancers and what’s the going rate for a bridal or wedding bouquet aren’t often discussed online. A valuable day all round!

Flowers used:

• Assorted daffodils / narcissus

• Hyacinths

• Iris

• Blush carnations

• Anemones

• Limonium

With love,

P.S. My latest episode of my podcast Flowers & Folklore is out now and it’s all about tulips. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts and lots of other places.