So, although dying roses didn't go as planned, they did get some color on then, and an overall blue sheen that you can't really see in the picture (the phone picks up the blame for that). But they did last quite a while and I just threw the last of them away this morning. I will probably try again, with younger, very tight roses, and see if that goes better.
The flowers last week were quite lovely; there were many compliments from what I hear. I worked with the white roses, some lilies, tulips, and greens. The altar got the full production with foam, ribbon, and such. The vase went on the welcome center, and the cute little silver pitcher is on one of the other tables.
One of the beauties of tulips is that if you have the right amount for your container, you can just put them in, and they will drape beautifully. They'll give you a nice, classic look with little effort--just make sure you clean and hydrade them well ahead of time. These cleaned and hydrated these the day before and by morning they stood up straight.
There are currently two sets of half a dozen roses on my kitchen table. One has neon blue food coloring, and the other regular blue. Although they were set up last night, there were no blue roses this morning. This is an experiment, so I started small. This morning I split the stems a few inches, started with fresh warm water, and added more food coloring. The curtain on our balcony is open for sunlight.
This morning wasn't very encouraging, but hopefully they will be more blue tonight. I'd be happy with spots or stripes, even. In the future, I'd like to experiment and try and get it down faster, and with the joyous light blue shade I'm looking for. It might just require quite a bit of color testing to get it.
More tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I did a monochromatic study for church this past Sunday. Ignore the mess on the counter, it was snowing and we wanted to get going before the roads got bad.
As anyone actually reading this blog knows, I haven't posted in a long time. This is mostly because I am so far behind with the floral arrangements (we haven't gotten past December yet). So I think I'm going to skip all that, and just keep going with what I'm doing now, and hopefully things will pick up.
This upcoming Sunday is the Easter cantata at our church, which, yes, has been done on Palm Sunday the last few years. We have a sermon on Easter Sunday. So like at Christmas, I'm going to do nicer arrangements than usual for both weeks, as we'll have a lot of people in and visitors for both. However, since DH and I are going to be on DC this weekend for an actual mini-vacation, I will be doing the flowers for the cantata Friday night.
What to do for these two services has alluded me for quite a while, but bright blue has always been a very joyful color to me. Of course, there aren't flowers that color naturally, most of the time. The project for this week, therefore, is dying roses blue. A nice, bright, turquoise kind of blue. Many googled sources describe the process as easy: water + food coloring = colored flowers. So hopefully all goes well. I'll be setting it up tonight, and will definitely be taking pictures. And then 1-2 days later, blue roses!
And...edited becuase I just realized I never posted the pictures from the flower show. They are available here.
