Making A Pomander-Without Floral Foam

As some of you know, Local Color Flowers made a New Year’s resolution to give up floral foam this year. Last week, we had a new floral foam free design challenge-flower girl pomanders.

A floral pomander, or kissing ball is a basically a ball of flowers that is carried on a ribbon “strap” like a purse. Normally, we would use a little floral foam ball, soaked in water, filled with flowers with a ribbon attached.

The end result would look something like this.

To tackle this design challenge, I first posted a note on the Flower Farmers facebook group. This is a relatively new group made up of flower farmers, designers and enthusiasts. My post elicited lots of suggestions and comments which was super helpful. I was surprised and how many people had tried inventive, creative ways to make pomanders.

I took the ideas to the studio with me and posed the challenge to Carling and Irene. Our idea was basic-find something round that we could poke flowers into or glue flowers to.

 

This hodge podge group of materials represents some of the items we tried: an apple, a tulip bulb, a ball of boxwood rigged together and a wired ball of moss.

After a couple attempts, we settled on a little ball of crumpled up soft, aluminum wire stuffed with moss. we then used oasis floral glue to glue the ranunculus on to the moss.

The end result looked great!

For improvements, I think we would try to just use a ball of moss or something that could be totally composted.  Overall though, I think we were excited about the results.

If anyone else has made pomanders without using floral foam, I’d love to hear about your experience and any suggestions you have for floral foam free projects.

First Wedding of 2010

Today was LoCoFlo’s first wedding of the year! Thankfully it was NOT snowing! Since it was so early in the season and since our Maryland growers have had such a hard time with the snow, we had to reach beyond our normal set of growers to a new (new to us) farmer in Southern New Jersey. Van Dyke Brothers farm is 111 miles from Baltimore and they have beautiful flowers! Dave Dowling of Farmhouse Flowers supplied the beautiful curly willow and pussy willow for the large arrangements.

It felt a little strange working on flowers again after such a long break (mid November). It took my fingers a little while to get used to taping again and wrapping…but pretty soon it started to feel normal.

The bouquet turned out great! Tulips, anemones, ranunculus and viburnum. Beautiful greens and whites to remind me that Spring is not far away!

The bride was totally relaxed when I arrived and was looking forward to a casual lunch with her sister before the ceremony.

I am really excited about LoCoFlo this year! We are working with great designers, growers, venues, photographers and most of all clients! Stay tuned for updates on our exciting year ahead.