When a friend sent a box full of paper thin bark, I knew that the time finally had come that I had enough bark shavings to design a woodland dress. As simply as the dress was decorated, I decided to go all out to design the large mask/headpiece with gorgeous hellebores, mahonia berries, mushrooms, lichen […]

Tillandsia xerographica is a slow-growing epiphyte. Just like orchids they grow on the surface of trees and derive their moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water. They are super easy to take care of as a house plant: submerge them in water for 30 minutes once a week, and you will enjoy them for […]

When I found dried lotus leaves, I wondered how to use them to create a delicately layered structure for a headpiece. As always, it involved some trial and error, but in the end, I loved the way it worked out. The gorgeous phalaenopsis orchids, along with some textures were the perfect ingredients to decorate the […]

Usually I design the base of the headpieces with wire mesh; for this one I used an old hat that I had not worn in years, manipulated the shape a bit and covered it with palm net before decorating it with a variety of textures as well as with cymbidium orchids, ranunculus, strawflowers and leucodendron. […]

One of the local growers at the Portland Flower Market is a fantastic hybridizer for phalaenopsis orchids. Orchidaceae is located in Walla Walla, WA and we are so lucky that they sell a large selection of their gorgeous orchid plants here. Every year in the summer they have an excess of blooming plants; we benefit […]

The parents of my friend Gwen own a farm and several hundreds of acres of forest in Wisconsin. We visited them and took advantage of this beautiful setting to do a fun photo shoot. Our friend Theresa was our fabulous photographer. Thank you to models Jessica Ecker and Sydney Severson

This month it was the 9th time that I taught a 6 day workshop at Cohim in Beijing. Once again, the students displayed incredible talent and creativity. As always, pictures speak louder than words….

It was in the summer of 2018 that I found out that I would be part of the team of Holly Chapple, to create designs for the fashion show at the fantastic annual flower event Fleuramour, which takes place at a very old castle Alden Biesen in the province of Limburg in northeastern Belgium. For […]

  photo: Susan McLeary It was such an honor to be invited to participate at the yearly event Fleuramour. For the 24th year this spectacular flower show took place at the  spectacular castle Alden Biesen in Belgium. Super talented designers from over 20 different countries created brilliant installations in the many rooms of this castle […]

A year an a half ago Pieter Toebaert, who organizes Flower Time invited me to participate in this magnificent flower event that takes place every other year at city hall in Brussels. It was such an honor and the experience was simply extra ordinary. Pieter suggested that I would make botanical botanical dresses, headpieces and […]