Catherine and I made our first trip to the California State Floral Association's annual Top Ten design competition last weekend. Catherine is actually a board member, so she was there running the silent auction. I was officially doing 'whatever Catherine needed'. In between lifting heavy things and locating misplaced heavy things and then lifting them, I was able to catch some of the competition. I thought it might be cool to present it to you as a photo essay since the best part of the show is seeing the great work the floral designers did. So without further ado, the 2011 CSFA Top Ten competition!
Before the competition started on Sunday, lots of CSFA members were putting in hard work on Friday and Saturday. Calif Flora 2011 was not just the Top Ten competition. There were also classes, certification exams, and design shows, all of which needed materials and preparation. Catherine and I were helping to set up the 'surprise package' portion of the Top Ten competition. For those who don't know, I'll put the surprise package challenge in very simple terms: Here's a bag of surprise dry goods, here are some stems, here's a theme, good luck. Contestants have no idea ahead of time what they're going to get, just that each contestant is going to get the same supplies. More on that later. Here's a picture of the surprise bags, all ready to go.
If you've ever needed to fill up 9 buckets at once, I have the thing for you. You can't use this without smiling. I saw several grown-ups make up some pretty good excuses just so they could fill up 9 buckets simultaneously. Things like, 'I only need 1, but I could probably use 8 spares'. I wish I had thought of a good one myself. Alas.
This is either a stem cutter built into the table or a tiny guillotine from a tiny French Revolution. In all seriousness, it was great that the people of Mellano's in the LA Flower Market let us use their facilities all weekend, including this space upstairs.
On to Sunday's competition. The students went first and started with the Designer's Choice competition. For this portion, the competitors were allowed to bring in whatever foundation they constructed ahead of time, as well as their own dry goods and stems. Everyone was working on the same theme, which was California Fresh, but each participant had a completely different rig and different interpretation, from simple to incredibly elaborate. Pictured is one of the more elaborate ones I saw.
After the Designer's Choice competition comes the surprise package. Here's where the little red bags we helped assemble come into play. The surprise package could not be more different than the open competition, where you could have planned your design for months. The last thing I want to hear when I'm competing for something is 'surprise', but the students seemed to be having fun, and even Tony Alvarez pointed out how relaxed everyone was.
The students created some amazing designs in both parts of the competition. I think the most nerve-wracking part had to be when you walked your design over to the table to be judged. I would have been thinking, 'Don't drop it, don't drop it, don't drop it', the whole time. Thankfully, there were no such disasters. After all of the designs had been moved, I sneaked in to take some pictures. I felt like I was doing some real journalism when I was asked to leave and said in my most official sounding voice, 'I just need to take these pictures for some of the board members'. That was kinda true. Spoiler alert: #8 was the student winner.
Next up, Top Ten! Top Ten was hosted by Lee Burcher who has won just about everything there is to win in the floral industry. Despite his admission that he was nervous, he also made a great host for the event. Here the Designer's Choice competition is about to get underway, once again with elaborate and simple contraptions ready to be flowered up.
For the surprise package portion of Top Ten, we had a legitimate surprise in store for the competitors. We got our hands on a pretty new product called, 'Stackables', which are the white containers you can see in front of the participants. They're stackable containers that can be used in a variety of ways. Some of the designers looked at them in the same way you might look at a Martian or a dragon or something that you couldn't even believe you were actually seeing. Others had an immediate idea and made it the central container of their design. As it did with the students, the surprise package reminds us that the world don't move to the beat of just one drum.
This is what everyone was competing for. That and some money ($500 for first!), a gift certificate to Shinoda Design Center, and an entry into the Sylvia Cup, which is a national design competition. Not bad for 1.5 hours of work. Instead of being merciful and telling everyone who won shortly after the competition, all of the designers had to wait until the end of the day before the big announcement. Brutal.
Once again I slipped into the judging area, although this time I was not asked to go someplace else. A design that immediately caught my attention was the one I called 'Bizarro California'. The entire time she was working on it on-stage, it was facing her, so it looked like California was backward. Then when it was put on display, it was backwards if you were looking at it from the spectator area. Apparently it did not only catch my eye, as this turned out to be the winning entry, crafted by Mai Lakia Chhim. Her surprise package entry wasn't too shabby either.
Congratulations to all the participants, and to all the CSFA board members, sponsors, and volunteers who made the event such a success. See you next year!
Before the competition started on Sunday, lots of CSFA members were putting in hard work on Friday and Saturday. Calif Flora 2011 was not just the Top Ten competition. There were also classes, certification exams, and design shows, all of which needed materials and preparation. Catherine and I were helping to set up the 'surprise package' portion of the Top Ten competition. For those who don't know, I'll put the surprise package challenge in very simple terms: Here's a bag of surprise dry goods, here are some stems, here's a theme, good luck. Contestants have no idea ahead of time what they're going to get, just that each contestant is going to get the same supplies. More on that later. Here's a picture of the surprise bags, all ready to go.
If you've ever needed to fill up 9 buckets at once, I have the thing for you. You can't use this without smiling. I saw several grown-ups make up some pretty good excuses just so they could fill up 9 buckets simultaneously. Things like, 'I only need 1, but I could probably use 8 spares'. I wish I had thought of a good one myself. Alas.
This is either a stem cutter built into the table or a tiny guillotine from a tiny French Revolution. In all seriousness, it was great that the people of Mellano's in the LA Flower Market let us use their facilities all weekend, including this space upstairs.
On to Sunday's competition. The students went first and started with the Designer's Choice competition. For this portion, the competitors were allowed to bring in whatever foundation they constructed ahead of time, as well as their own dry goods and stems. Everyone was working on the same theme, which was California Fresh, but each participant had a completely different rig and different interpretation, from simple to incredibly elaborate. Pictured is one of the more elaborate ones I saw.
After the Designer's Choice competition comes the surprise package. Here's where the little red bags we helped assemble come into play. The surprise package could not be more different than the open competition, where you could have planned your design for months. The last thing I want to hear when I'm competing for something is 'surprise', but the students seemed to be having fun, and even Tony Alvarez pointed out how relaxed everyone was.
The students created some amazing designs in both parts of the competition. I think the most nerve-wracking part had to be when you walked your design over to the table to be judged. I would have been thinking, 'Don't drop it, don't drop it, don't drop it', the whole time. Thankfully, there were no such disasters. After all of the designs had been moved, I sneaked in to take some pictures. I felt like I was doing some real journalism when I was asked to leave and said in my most official sounding voice, 'I just need to take these pictures for some of the board members'. That was kinda true. Spoiler alert: #8 was the student winner.
Next up, Top Ten! Top Ten was hosted by Lee Burcher who has won just about everything there is to win in the floral industry. Despite his admission that he was nervous, he also made a great host for the event. Here the Designer's Choice competition is about to get underway, once again with elaborate and simple contraptions ready to be flowered up.
For the surprise package portion of Top Ten, we had a legitimate surprise in store for the competitors. We got our hands on a pretty new product called, 'Stackables', which are the white containers you can see in front of the participants. They're stackable containers that can be used in a variety of ways. Some of the designers looked at them in the same way you might look at a Martian or a dragon or something that you couldn't even believe you were actually seeing. Others had an immediate idea and made it the central container of their design. As it did with the students, the surprise package reminds us that the world don't move to the beat of just one drum.
This is what everyone was competing for. That and some money ($500 for first!), a gift certificate to Shinoda Design Center, and an entry into the Sylvia Cup, which is a national design competition. Not bad for 1.5 hours of work. Instead of being merciful and telling everyone who won shortly after the competition, all of the designers had to wait until the end of the day before the big announcement. Brutal.
Once again I slipped into the judging area, although this time I was not asked to go someplace else. A design that immediately caught my attention was the one I called 'Bizarro California'. The entire time she was working on it on-stage, it was facing her, so it looked like California was backward. Then when it was put on display, it was backwards if you were looking at it from the spectator area. Apparently it did not only catch my eye, as this turned out to be the winning entry, crafted by Mai Lakia Chhim. Her surprise package entry wasn't too shabby either.
Congratulations to all the participants, and to all the CSFA board members, sponsors, and volunteers who made the event such a success. See you next year!