Lobiloo is a software program that creates beautiful, fast and accurate image-based price estimates for clients.  Offering a library of over 2,500 floral images provided by Florabundance with unique finder tools (by season, color, etc.), as well as the capability for florists to upload their own gallery of images of flowers and rental items.  Plus, it calculates the number of stems needed of each flower and creates an order form for your wholesaler.  Sweet!!!

Project Runway contestant Korto Momolu won a recent fashion challenge with a sleek white pantsuit, utilizing the vibrant pink hue “Radiant Orchid” in stylish panels on the jacket front.

Contestants Seth Aaron Henderson and Elena Slivnyak, as well as, Viktor Luna and Christopher Palu, also designed outfits featuring Pantone’s trending “Color of the Year”.

Each year the Pantone color experts research and follow trends in pop culture, media, and new technology formulating what will be the popular  color palette of the coming year.  Our bbrooks member Floral Art, in Venice, CA shares some of their favorites on a recent blogspot!

Select nontoxic leaves, such as bay leaves.

Melt approximately 2-oz. vanilla candy coating in a saucepan over low heat until melted (about 3 minutes). Stir until smooth. Cool slightly. Working on parchment paper, spoon a 1/8-inch-thick layer of candy coating over backs of leaves, spreading to edges.

Transfer leaves gently, by their stems, to a clean sheet of parchment paper, resting them candy coating sides up; let stand until candy coating is firm (about 10 minutes). Gently grasp each leaf at stem end, and carefully peel the leaf away from the candy coating. Store candy leaves in a cold, dry place, such as an airtight container in the freezer, up to 1 week.

As seen in  December 2013, Southern Living.

Recently at Rebecca Hossack Gallery NYC ~ Klaus Enrique: The Reaping.

A series of photographic portraits, Enrique’s creations complicate and investigate notions of the ephemeral.  Utilizing materials such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, and other organic materials, Enrique produces glorious human forms and captures them in a rare moment of ripeness, preserving the perfection that precedes inevitable decay.  Enrique breathes new life into these forms, harvesting, reaping, and reconfiguring them as beautiful, often dark portraits.

“Halloween used to be so simple. You got a punkin, cut off it’s stringy orange insides, and carved a face on it that looked like your brother. But, that just wasn’t good enough for some folks…

I blame the zombies… You can’t swing a dead cat this time of year without knocking a few down like bowling pins, which is not hard to do, considering they move a the pace of a box turtle…

Mostly, I love Halloween because it is the orange-and-black beginning of a season that tumbles into Thanksgiving, which tumbles into Christmas.  And zombies just seem out of place in that…

The iconic image of Halloween should be, as God intended, the punkin. The punkin, carved into faces that are scary only because we want them to be, winking from every front porch. The punkin, cast in plastic, swinging from the hands of knee- high princesses, leering back from department store shelves, until it gives way to tins of butter cookies.

But I fear for the punkin. How long before he is kicked down the street by zombie hordes, booted into obsurity?

Young people tell me that no one- no one- want to dress up like a punkin anymore. All a punkin does, they say, is sit there, and glow.

This may be true, all of it. But, try to make a pie out of a zombie and see where that gets you.”

As seen in Rick Bragg’s Southern Journal article, Southern Living, October 2013.

As featured in House Beautiful, September 2013 issue.

To create his collection, “Flora”, Nick Knight spent over three and a half years in the herbarium of London’s Natural History Museum mapping the historical movement of flora and fauna – from opium to cotton – in our society.

Initiated in 1993 for his installation of ‘Plant Power’ at the Natural History Museum, London, Flora is a comprehensively daring volume of flowers and plants chosen from the Museum’s six million specimens.

These simple, elegant arrangements of Dahlias, Roses and  Montbretia, in late summer/fall tones, add just the right touches of color to Sam Beall’s  rustic-meets-refined dinner party at Blackberry Farm in the idyllic Smoky Mountain foothils.  As seen in Southern Living magazine, October 2013 issue.

“I was so inspired by the gorgeous, ornate details found throughout Alice & Jason’s nuptials I decided to play off the theme and get really artsy for our cover shoot with Brian Marcus of Fred Marcus Photography. So I enlisted the help of Bess Wyrick of Celadon & Celery, who along with Arminé Ohanessian of R-Mine Bespoke created the stunning floral crown I’m wearing in the image below.  (Would you believe we originally connected via Instagram? Amazing what connections can be made on social media.) Head to Expert Style Tips to see how such a unique piece went from concept to reality.”  ~ Ceci

As seen in CeciStyle September 2013.

These little guys from Eco-Goats are cleaning up the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC!  Awesome cute!