A specific shade of beautiful

What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.                                                                                                                                V. Woolf

String Gardens

I've become obsessed with string gardens lately.  I made my first one with a miniature pothos plant just because it was in my house waiting to have a purpose.  It's also a foolproof plant, and I think it took me 5 minutes.  

You can wrap the base with almost anything that's durable.  Today I used a recycled thin rope but i'm thinking copper for the next time, which will be an oncidium orchid or a jasmine plant methinks. 

Below are some of my favorites.  

Go and discover more on String_Gardens on the Facebooks.

Even a tree?!

I believe this one is my most favorite.

Or, maybe it's this display...

Nope - wait a minute.  It's this one.  Yep.

Make one yourself!

 Here is my friend, Taylor Patterson of Fox Fodder Farm, demonstrating  

how to make a bonsai string garden for Wilder Quarterly Magazine.

And then there is this cheery how-to video.

flower installs

This first photo of the upside down, un-puffed, dandelions  was my inspiration for this post.  Once I stumbled upon this installation, I went into the internet black hole and stumbled upon some pretty sublime stuff. 


I was thinking this could be a stunning decor element for a Chuppah or for any ceremony type for that matter.  I just can't wait to try this process come spring time.  Perhaps adding some color or metallic dusting could take the purity out (which I do indeed love)  making it a little more vivacious. 

This creation was made by German Artist Regine Ramseier as part of ArToll Summer Lab 2011.

  You can real about the process and artist here.

This is a different way to look at a ceremony backdrop.  Although a little messy for my liking but i'm totally into it. 

These are fresh flowers taped to the wall.  It looks like wallpaper and I love this.  I was thinking how pretty this would be as a photo booth backdrop or on a few selected walls in a plain and simple venue.  Pretty. 

I actually don't know where I found this photo but it was in my inspiration folder.  I'm envisioning this down a hallway leading to some kind of wonderful.  I love the softness here and I love how the flowers mesh together, leading to the next flower type.  It's too bad that it was poorly lit but the lighting options are endless.  

This  install was commissioned  for the 25th Anniversary of Bouquets to Art Exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from Waterily Pond.

size: diameter – 20 ft. height – 15 ft. weight – 800 lb

500 blossoming branches of Forsythia

30 manzanita trees

200 trunks of curly willow

500 stems of anthuriums  

For more photos and video of the installation please visit here.

A little bit of our 2011

We were busy in 2011 and have shared a little bit of our work below, but you can view all of this and more on our Facebook page and on our updated website.  

                              Enjoy...

Please see here for photo credits.