Well, here we are! After three months of pressing, talking, designing, and building, KC & Mary’s botanical collage is complete!
When KC & Mary showed up at my studio with two coolers bursting with flowers, two things were obvious to me. First, they LOVED their flowers — they held a tremendous amount of meaning for them—and second, I was going to be making something, unlike anything I’d ever made before.
See how it turned out…
What started out as an order for an 11”x14” collage made from KC’s bouquet, became a 20”x20” shadow-boxed piece containing a whopping 27 flowers built out in layers.
I wanted to capture the way KC and Mary lit up when they told me about their wedding day and how much their flowers meant to them – joy, utter, complete, unapologetic joy. I wanted to create that for them in an explosion of color, texture and dimension that would transport them back to their wedding day.
This collage was challenging, not just in the huge amount of work involved—pressing thousands of flower petals and reconstructing 27 flowers from them—but deciding which flowers to use and which (sadly) not to use.
There were the technical challenges of creating depth by building the height of the flowers, creating a shadow box for the frame and getting everything JUST right. (Someday, I’ll tell you the story of the one tiny flower that just wasn’t EXACTLY where I wanted it to be and the lengths I went through to move it.)
And there were the design challenges…how to create balance AND joy, order AND effusiveness, structure AND raw, powerful emotion?
Watch KC & Mary see their collage for the first time…
1In the end, it’s a piece that invites you to step closer and experience every inch. It welcomes you into a world, a celebration, a beginning…and it rewards you with something new to see each time you stop to take a look.
Isn’t that what LOVE really is? When we’ve found our soulmate, isn’t it like that too? Always something new to discover in this person we’ve chosen and how richly we’re rewarded when we stop to look more closely!
Whether a couple brings me six flowers or six dozen flowers, I strive to make art that resonates with their love and transports them back to the moment they said, “I do.”
It was transformative to work with KC & Mary. Just as every creative experience I share with my clients fills my heart–it’s been deeply gratifying to move in parallel with them for a small part of their journey together.
Dear ones, thank you for taking a moment to stop and smell the flowers with me!
P.S. – Experience the process from beginning to end, by watching part 1 and part 2 of KC & Mary’s story.
