Category: Flowers in the Arts

There’s only one thing on any young adult’s mind after they buy a ticket to the latest music festival — “what will I wear?” Over the years, music festivals have become just as much about the fashion as they are the music. And while festivals have been responsible for bringing back numerous fashion styles (thank you Coachella for bringing back boho-chic!), no trend has been more popular than flower inspired outfits.

Let’s kickoff music festival season with 11 ways you can incorporate flowers into your favorite festival looks.

Flower Crown

It’s a good thing these flowers are already shaped into a crown, because when it comes to bringing flowers to a music festival, flower crowns are king. And what better way to make your headpiece truly unique than by creating it yourself with your favorite flowers?

On Your Shoes

If you’re going to be partying in the desert sand, comfortable shoes are a must. Jazz up a pair of plain white sneakers by adding your favorite flowers to the back of your heel or toes.

As Jewelry

Flower necklaces, bracelets, and rings are a fun way to add color and texture to any outfit. Best of all, most designs take less than an hour to create.

On Your Bag

The next time you’re out, grab a plain canvas bag. When you get home, decorate it with all of your favorite flowers. Whether you decide to add just one or two flowers in the center, or cover it top to bottom, you now have a stylish (yet still very functional) way to carry your sunscreen, phone, water, and sunglasses wherever you go.

As a Pin or Boutonniere

This is another creation that you can make in a matter of minutes if you think your outfit needs just a little more “oomph.” An old bobby or safety pin makes the perfect base for a couple of fresh flowers.

Hair Clips

Imagine this — you’re about to head out to your favorite festival, when you suddenly realize that you are completely flower-free. Gasp! (Okay, maybe it’s not quite this dramatic, but still!) Hot gluing freshly picked flowers to a hair clip is a super quick way to add flowers to your outfit.

On Your Shirt

If you want flowers to be the main act in your outfit, try adding them all over your shirt.

Hula Hoops

If there’s anything music festivals popularized more than wearing flowers, it’s hula hoops. So we say, combine the two and have the best of both worlds! Gluing flowers to the outside of a hula hoop will up any hooper’s game.

Earrings

Every girl has that one pair of earrings that they’ve had forever, but never really wear. Now is the time to make them useful again! Gluing a small flower to the top of an earring is a great way to bring new life to a piece of old jewelry.

Decorate Your Campsite

You may only be camping for a few days, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still spruce up your temporary home. A bouquet of handpicked flowers would make a great addition to any campsite table.

Flower Tattoos

Grab your favorite flower (we suggest something with a distinct texture or pattern, like a tulip or lily) and pick a few of the petals off. Then, dip them in paint and press them against your skin to create your very own temporary flower tattoo.

Whether you decide to mix and match of few of these ideas or just choose one, bringing flowers to a music festival (or anywhere, honestly) is easier than you think!

For years, directors and creators have relied on roses to tell a story in ways that words never could. While you may assume roses just symbolize love and romance, storytellers have long used the rose as a metaphor for everything from lust to destruction and rebirth. Below are some of our favorites films and stories where roses play an important role.

American Beauty

It’s hard to watch American Beauty and not stare in awe at the use of roses throughout the film – filling bathtubs, on the coffee table and growing outside of the house. Initially, it appears as though roses represent love, lust and passion. While that may be true, the rose has been said to hold a deeper meaning in the film. Based on the tagline “Look closer,” it’s believed that roses symbolize the decay of American suburban life – as the films main (and married) character, Lester Burnham, begins to fantasize about being with his daughter’s best friend. The roses used for the film were chosen specifically because they are susceptible to rot, mirroring the family that began pure and whole, but is now falling apart.

Here at 1-800-Flowers.com, we love cacti and flowers, which means we especially love flowering cacti. We came across some of Greg Krehel’s amazing timelapse videos of echonopsis cactus flowers during their blooming cycle and had SO many questions. Luckily, Greg was able to answer some of these for us and we thought you may be interested in Greg’s impressive artwork, too!

1. How did you get involved in working with flowers and cacti?

Growing up in New York, I often went with my father to a local nursery. It had a table with small cactus in 2” pots that I became fascinated with. That was the beginning of my love of cacti. The bug stuck with me over the years but really blossomed when I retired and had time to take on some new hobbies.

2. What inspired you to start time-lapse montages?

Most cactus flowers last only a brief period. In the case of the Echinopsis genus of which I’m particularly fond, the flowers last barely a day from opening to wilting. This brief existence caused me to first start taking still photographs of the blooms to try to preserve some of their beauty (I’d never owned a DSLR camera or taken anything besides family trip pictures prior to starting to image cactus blooms). The jump from still images to time lapses came from seeing one of my sons produce a time lapse video as part of a work project.

3. What is your favorite piece and why?

My favorite time lapse to this point is one that shows 24 hours in the life of 10 gorgeous yellow ‘Daydream’ flowers compressed into a few seconds. The scene opens with 6 flowers open and 4 buds. The 4 buds grow and bloom. The 6 flowers that were already open wilt to nothing (which is actually not only interesting but has its own beauty). I love this time lapse for a number of reasons … there’s some much interesting action … you can watch each of the 10 flowers and see something different. And the colors are gorgeous, even in the wilting flowers the colors are special.

4. What has been your greatest obstacle in developing the time lapse videos? 

Even though my skill at the time lapse process has improved greatly due to have done several 100 at this point, there is one big challenge that remains: Anticipating how the flowers will move as they open. Sometimes the flowers will drop in height as they open. Other times they’ll move up towards the lights I’m using. Sometimes some blooms will drop while others move upward. It’s a crap shoot. I try to have the view framed to allow for these shifts, but often … too often … the shift is more dramatic than I anticipated and the result is a bust.

5. (a) How and where did you learn all your knowledge about videography and photography?

Prior to becoming interested in photographing cactus flowers three years ago, I’d never really been into photography/videography and didn’t own a DSLR type camera. Upon becoming interested I got my hands on a good many books and watched some of the great free resources on the net. I was really taken by the great photographer Harold Davis’ books and attended one of his workshops on using Photoshop to edit images. And then I went and made tons and tons of mistakes and learned from them.

5. (b) What kind of equipment do you use?

I use a Canon 6D DSLR and an assortment of Canon lenses … most often the great Canon 100mm Macro lens. I use LED lights since they stay cool over the long period I am shooting images. I have an inexpensive light tent with a black backdrop that I set up in my “studio” (which is really a bathroom that ceases to serve its normal functions during cactus blooming season).

5. (c) How long have you been studying echinopsis?

I became a full-fledged echinopsis addict 3 years ago.

6. Is there an echinopsis season? If so, please tell us about it.

There is … where I live in Florida, Echinopsis bloom from April until October … the period of the year when it’s above 80F most days. One of the great things about Echinopsis vs. many other types of cacti is that many Echinopsis species/hybrids will bloom multiple times in a single season. I’d also note that different hybrids bloom at different times during the season. Some bloom early and are done. Others won’t start blooming until late summer or even early fall.

7. Have you ever worked with other types of flowering plants? If so, which ones?

Nope. I’m a one-trick pony.

8. What is the best advice you can give for taking care of flowering cacti?

The single most important piece of advice is to not over-water, especially during winter months when cacti are virtually dormant. I don’t water my collection at all from November until March. Yes, the plants will shrivel and look awful. But at least they won’t die from root rot! I have a good many other suggestions about soil and fertilization and etc. on my echinopsis.com website … specifically this page: http://echinopsis.com/care

Check out Greg’s Instagram @echinopsisfreak where he posts new timelapses regularly.

Throughout history, flowers have been an inspiration to all who understand their value and beauty. From literature to fashion and even to financial bubbles (see: Tulip Mania), flowers of all varieties have made their way into elements of culture. One of the most prevalent ways to see the influence of flowers is through art. To celebrate the effect on flowers on art, here are four famous artists who were also flower enthusiasts!

Artists with Flower Paintings

Claude Monet

Fans of Monet know that it is not just his Impressionist style that is instantly recognizable; his appreciation of nature as both inspiration and as a subject matter is just as widely known. In fact, many would find it difficult to think about Monet’s greatest works without instantly thinking of his garden-inspired series, which was painted in his famous “Monet’s Gardens,” pictured below.

Once April 1st comes around, it’s time to take out of storage those rain boots, umbrellas, ponchos and of course – vases for your spring flowers. The age-old saying “April Showers Bring May Flowers” still holds true today. But just how did this fun saying originate? Today we’re diving into the history of this poem and prepping for the rainy months ahead of us!

April Showers Bring May Flowers: A History

The poem as we know it today originated all the way in 1157, in the form of a short poem written by Thomas Tusser. The poem can be found in the April section of a collection of his writings titled, “A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry.” The poem goes as follows:

While this poem is clearly a direct ancestor to the version we know today, let’s travel back in time a bit further to the end of the Fourteenth Century, where legendary poem Geoffrey Chaucer had his own say on the month of April in his famous collection of stories titled, “The Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer’s version goes as follows:

Original:

“Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;”

Translation:

“When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March’s drought to the root and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;”

While Chaucer speaks of April in relation to March rather than April, it could certainly be said that while Thomas Tusser may be the father of this saying, Geoffrey Chaucer is certainly the grandfather.

Half toy rocking horse, half dinosaur rocking horse, towering at 37 feet and adorned in over 50,000 flowering plants, Jeff Koons’ exhibit, Split Rocker, seems like something from a fairy tale.

In an interview with The Fondation Beyeler, Koons describes his work of art as “…a division where these two forms don’t go together, but it also represents a unity, because the only way this split really exists is by experiencing it. If you try in any other form…you can never really replicate it.”

We took his advice and decided to experience it for ourselves! So on the next sunny day we hopped on the train to the The Rockefeller Center while this whimsical exhibit took bloom in NYC.