Hey everyone! It’s Katrina here, sorry I had disappeared there for a little while, I had a baby! I hope you guys have been enjoying the posts from Travis sharing some of her GORGEOUS wedding work from this summer. A long time ago we had started off this blog introducing Travis, and now it is time to introduce myself! To keep things simple I am answering the same questions that I had asked Travis and you guys get to know a little more about me.

1. Share a little bit about yourself
I am a mom to two boys, Landon is almost 2 and my newest, Theo, is just 9 weeks old! I am pretty social and I much to my husbands embarrassment I love laughing really loud. Along with my love for flowers I love spending time in my kitchen baking, sewing, crafting, reading, gardening and being outside. I am a chatty Kathy, a BIG fan of bright colours and am kind of obsessed with Pinterest (you can check out my excessive pinning HERE). If you haven’t already noticed I tend to excessively use the words love and beautiful… and also really enjoy using exclamations because I’m very excited all the time!!!

2. What was your journey like in becoming a florist?
My very first job working with flowers was at Save On Foods when it first opened up on the east end working in the floral department. I absolutely loved working with flowers and after a couple years I realized I wanted to get more serious about it. With a ton of support from my parents I got a new job at Grower Direct and enrolled in the Commercial Floristry Program at Olds College. My year at Olds was amazing, I was surrounded by people who cared about the same things I did, I got to learn so many new things and had a lot of fun doing it.

Once I graduated I continued working at Grower Direct for another year and then moved on to Stems Floral Gallery when it first opened up. I really enjoyed my time working at Stems getting to work with amazing product, was very inspired and learned a lot!

After a few years I decided I wanted to go after my dream of starting my own floral business. I started up Cattleya Chic designing wedding and event flowers. I truly loved doing wedding flowers, creating beautiful flowers for my brides. My business was my baby and I spent so many hours working on it, but after having an actual baby I was having a really hard investing enough time in my business.

Which brings me here! I knew I didn’t want to give up working with flowers, but I also knew I didn’t have enough time to keep running my business. I knew Travis’ work and loved her designs and wanted to be a part of her team so that I could continue my love for flowers. I started working with Travis last year helping with wedding flowers, putting on a couple floral classes, and working on the blog. It has been an awesome experience for me so far, I hope I can continue being part of the team for years to come!

3. How long have you been working in the floral industry?
As of now, 12.5 years already! This was my first summer not working because I was busy being pregnant/having a baby and it was strange not being busy with weddings.

4. What do you love MOST about working with flowers?
I think it is just the beauty of it all. The smell, the soft, delicate petals, the beautiful colours – all of it just blows me away.

5. What is your favorite flower?
I genuinely don’t have a FAVOURITE flower. I kind of feel like flowers are my kids and I love them all equally, but just for different reasons. That being said, I do have a special spot for all the different orchids. They are so striking and beautiful just on their own, I love having them in my house!

6. What inspires you?
It depends – there are two different ways to design, planned and spontaneous. When it comes to spontaneous design, pulling flowers out of the cooler to design a bouquet my biggest inspiration is COLOUR! I love when flowers come in and the colour is so delicious you just want to put them in everything. I love playing around with colours that excite me to create different colour combinations!

When it comes to planned projects, like wedding work, I love looking though magazines and wedding blogs seeing beautiful designs. It’s not that I want to copy others work, but I love seeing a certain element of a persons design and it inspiring me. Example – perhaps one florist used decorative floral wire in a bouquet in a way that I hadn’t thought of before and it immediately makes me think of one of my brides as a way to incorporate a little shine into her bouquet of roses and orchids. I really love incorporating small details into the bouquet that really match the style the bride is hoping to achieve.

7. What is your favourite design style or what style do you feel you naturally design best?
It is a tie between two completely different styles – modern or earthy. I love creating very simple, compact designs where you can really see and appreciate the gorgeous combination of colours and textures. OR I equally love very earthy designs using things like moss, branches, pods, and plants . I think these things are so beautiful, but most people overlook them or think they are boring ol’ earthy things. I think it is kind of cool to make something stunning out of plain old nature.

8. What is your proudest/most accomplished moment as a florist?
I use to send in photos of my work to Canadian Florist Magazine from time to time, and it resulted in them requesting to do a feature on my work. I love looking through floral magazines for inspiration, so it was truly an honour for me to get to do that and hopefully be a source of inspiration to others.

9. What upcoming trend for 2015 are you most excited for?
I am really loving the bouquets that have a very natural look to them. While I really like making clean, modern bouquets I really think it is beautiful having bouquets that mimic how flowers would naturally grow, with tendrils flowing down and flowers not perfectly aligned so you get more dimension. The mixing of so many different textures and instead of such bold colour palettes it is a more subtle combination of colours. I think it takes a really talented florist to design a bouquet that looks like it just grew that way.

10. When you aren’t busy designing beautiful bouquets what do you love to do in your spare time?

When I have any spare time my number one go to is baking. I love making a nice, fresh batch of cookies or muffins! The problem is I also enjoy eating said baking, so I have been trying to spend time on some of my other hobbies. While I was pregnant I picked up sewing again and really enjoyed making several cute quilts for my kids along with a few other simple sewing projects. I am looking forward to making some more in the future! I haven’t spent much time on it recently, but I am also determined to learn how to crochet so I can make some pretty blankets (I plan on keeping my family extremely warm haha) and other cute goodies for the kids.

Thank you for coming by to get to know a little more about me, stay tuned for an upcoming post with a tutorial on how to make a pretty fall wreath!

 

Katrina