Oversized rose headdress

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I have finally finished this custom oversized rose headdress. This was an experimental piece, the one your customers inspire you to dare and do it by ordering something quirky. You try your best and come up with ... well, a masterpiece!

Oversized rose headdress

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Trooping the colour ceremony and silk flowers

As you have probably heard, last Saturday Britain celebrated the Queen's official birthday with Trooping the Colour, a fabulous military parade.

Although the Queen was born on 21 April, it has long been the tradition to celebrate the Sovereign's birthday publicly on a day in the summer, when good weather is more likely. This military ceremony dates back to the early eighteenth century or earlier, when the colours (flags) of the battalion were carried (or 'trooped') down the ranks so that they could be seen and recognised by the soldiers.

Trooping the Colour is carried out by fully trained and operational troops, watched by members of the Royal Family, invited guests and members of the public. 

Naturally I was drawn to the celebration in order to observe what headwear members of the Royal family have chosen for the event.

A lot of attention has been drawn to the Duchess of Cambridge especially that it was her last  public appearance before the birth of her first child. In this nice picture we can see her pale pink Alexander McQueen coat and matching hat in more detail. 

Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall wore the Philip Treacy designed picture hat in a sparkly oyster coloured straw with a large upturned brim.

But most of all I was pleased when I saw the Duchess of Kent's hat. She wore a white pillbox hat trimmed with purple roses and a white tulle veil.

Interestingly the day before I painted one of my roses in a very similar colour.

For me silk flowers and hats is a marriage made in heaven and it is a pity we did not see many silk flowers on Royal hats at the parade. 

Here is one of my pillbox hats decorated with an open English rose:

Silk rose pillbox

Silk flower fascinators look equally stunning. Sometimes it takes just a flower to make a fascinator, like in this black rose fascinator

Black rose fascinator

or the oversized camellia headband

Oversized blush pink camellia hat

Do you use silk flowers to decorate your hats? If not, with what do you decorate them? Please share your opinions.

Fabric strawberries

Textile is a very versatile and pliable material and since there so many different varieties of textile one can say that there's got to be a fabric for any job imaginable. When we make flowers we choose nice lightweight and medium silk fabrics, shiny or matt, sometimes almost transparent depending on the flower we are creating.
But what if we want to make a ... strawberry? What fabric to use to make the work look nice and the process easy and smooth? Probably something relatively thick? Like velvet?
This is what came out of my fabric berry experimenting:

Materials: Japanese velvet, Japanese melton, satin, Japanese lining silk.
P.S. Whatever you see in the picture is a small unfinished interior arrangement. But I think that a little brooch with strawberries would look really cute!
How would you make use of these juicy berries?

A bunch of dahlias

Please be kindly informed that we have moved! To read new blog posts, purchase our floral pieces and learn more about how to make flowers you are welcome to visit out new website.

Last week was a dahlia week. Sometimes that happens. Poppy week, peony week, some other flower week.  So I started off by making a realistic dahlia on a stem. And here is the picture of it 

I used pure silk satin for petals and pure silk cosmosatin for leaves and calyx.

Because I needed to make a flower as a gift to one of my friends, I thought it would be a good idea to make another dahlia but this time probably a fantasy one. As I have discovered lond time ago by making 2 flowers at a time it is possible to save  quite a lot of time so whenever possible I always try to make 2 similar flowers at the same time. So for one a light golden pure silk satin has been chosen (plus shantung  the colour of old gold  for leaves), and intense Royal blue pure silk satin for the other one (along with viscose velvet in black to light blue gradation of colour for leaves and calyx).
Here are the 2 fantasy dahlias which I came up with

The golden dahlia has been successfully posted to my friend in Russia. The blue one is actually available for purchase at my Etsy shop at the moment.
Do you think I was through with the dahlias at that moment? I thought so too :-)
But on Friday I got a like-snow-in-July birthday party invitation from my other friend. As you understand the gift HAD to be handmade! So, another dahlia! This time, though, with other variations on material. Again, pure silk satin for petals, in rich dark chocolate colour with hints of burgundy/ The leaves and calyx have been made of hand painted lace and doubled with thin Japanese lining silk.  I tried to paint them in rich brown and intense berry colours. Here is the forth dahlia

The gift has been presented and we should have some photo feedback soon :-)
This chocolate brown dahlia is available to order. Please contact me via my Facebook page or my website shop  if you would like one.
Or, maybe you want one inn a completely different colour? What would it be?

Mastering the French veil

I have always found head pieces with veiling very feminine, mysterious and oh-so-romantic. No wonder that for quite some I wanted to try and create one myself. Eventually I got my hands on a piece of birdcage (or French or Russian) veil and a piece of silk satin of ripe aubergine colour and decided to try.
Most of the veils these days are made for weddings which is another area I am going to explore (white and ivory veils have already been ordered). But this first time I wanted to make an evening version of a head piece which can be worn to the theatre or to an appropriate reception. The flower had to be dramatic and big so I opted for a tree peony flower which reached 13 cm in diameter once finished. To add more romance to my head piece I used some lace for the leaves and thin silk organza for lining. As planned the flower and the veil were to be mounted onto a headband, so I wrapped it in black habotai silk. It took me some time to cut and gather the right amount of veiling as I wanted the veil to sit snugly around the forehead and not look like a little cloud above the head.
For this time I did not go for the full face veil option as there might be less occasions to wear that kind of head piece. The one I have created has everything to make it a hair accessory that will not leave the person wearing it unnoticed: a bold dramatic flower in rich colour, a short but impressive birdcage veil in black and a comfortable silk wrapped headband to hold all this together.
The peony head piece with a veil will easily dress up a little black dress.

What about you? Would you wear a head piece with veil?