Soil and Stem Floral Workshop

I'm so excited to share my outstanding experience attending Soil and Stem's Thanksgiving centerpiece workshop with you! It was seriously phenomenal! I've always liked flowers, but Nicole Land (the owner) showed me just how magically artistic floral arranging can be. 

I stumbled across Nicole's feed on Instagram a while ago, and have been following along ever since. Her work is just so inspiring! I absolutely love her wild, organic floral arrangements, as well as the romantic and moody tone of her feed (check out here amazing work here).

At the workshop I got to meet some lovely ladies who are also creative types like me- some were florists, a few were photographers, and others were students and fans just looking to learn. Heather Nan was our professional photographer who took photos of the class for us. I also just love her talent and photography style (check out her beautiful website here). 

  The workshop was held inside a spacious industrial-modern building in Salt Lake City. I love thw interior so much for a workshop. The windows were massive, letting in tons of sunlight, and I loved the achromatic pallet with all the textures as well as the warm, stained concrete floors. The wooden tables Nicole set up for us were just lovely as well. 

Nicole was a great teacher. All eyes were glued to her as she demonstrated some of her special techniques for keeping flowers in place- chickenwire stuffed into a vase. It was revelatory to me and made so much sense for positioning and re-positioning stems without doing damage to floral foam. 

 She began the class by demonstrating and talking through how she would create a Thanksgiving centerpiece using the materials she's collected for us to use. Some pieces she bought wholesale, while others, such as some of the berries and grasses, she just found on the side of the road-clever!

 I know this sounds ridiculously cheesy, but there was seriously a point in the class when I literally had a few tears well up in my eyes because of how beautiful her arrangement was looking. It was true art! I couldn't get over the way the colors and textures played off of one another so effectively, it was extraordinary! 

After her demonstration, it was our turn to try our hand at floral arranging. This was my very first time ever arranging flowers, so I was a bit timid! But I tried hard to remember the principles she taught us such as creating a "bed" for our flowers first by laying down greenery on the bottom edge of the vase, and turning the vase 180 degrees every once in a while to make sure both sides would look good from a diner's perspective. 

Nicole was so kind as to help me along the way. I had tons of questions!

 The workshop was a lot of fun. I so enjoyed the creativity and found it pretty relaxing actually! Plus, how can you go wrong working with nature?

And here is my final arrangement! I know I have tons of room for improvement, but It was so, so fun to put together! 

-Madeleine xo