- { Monday, June 11, 2012 }
Published: Coral and Aqua Engagement Shoot
- category: event design, Home, press, Styled Inspiration Shoot
Our Georgetown styled engagement shoot is featured on Wedding Chicks today! Take a look at the full gallery for lots of details and more of Chantal Andrea’s beautiful portraits of our lovely couple.
- Tagged: bright colors, chantal andrea, coral, crepe paper chandelier, engagement, finch and thistle, gold, kerissa bakes, lahappy, ombre cake, Styled Shoot, turquoise, wedding, wedding chicks
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All the fun British details from this Diamond Jubilee party on Bainbridge Island yesterday had me feeling quite patriotic over the weekend. Lots of Union Jacks, commemorative tins from M&S, tiny flags in the Pimms, festive flowers and classic British food – sausage rolls, flapjacks, victoria sponge, tea sandwiches…and chicken curry. Obviously. The Queen was there and Will and Kate put in an appearance over by the bar. As you can imagine there were lots of fascinators and hats among the guests and even a tiny corgi wearing pearls.
- Tagged: 60th anniversary, black vases, commemorative tin, diamond jubilee, event design, finch and thistle, floral design, peony, queen, ranunculus, seattle, tree peony
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- { Friday, May 25, 2012 }
Published: Design*Sponge Styled Engagement Shoot
- category: Design Sponge, event design, floral design, Home, press, Prop styling
Welcome Design*Sponge readers! Thanks for stopping by to take in some more details from the engagement shoot that is featured on my favorite design blog today. What a fun shoot! I worked with some of my favorite Seattle wedding pros and even a past client of mine (more on that later)…
It all started (as they often do) with a Pinterest board which you can see here. I picked my favorite colors and my favorite flowers and one of my favorite restaurants and worked from there. I called up my friend Sally who happens to be the creative dynamo behind Seattle based design firm LaHappy and enticed her into designing an invitation suite. She, of course, killed it. I mean, seriously, gold sparkly paper? Beautiful calligraphy in NEON pink? A vintage floral illustration envelope liner. Swoon.
Then we needed a photographer and I turned to another lovely friend, Chantal Andrea. Chantal has an incredible eye and her stunning portraits and moody journalistic style was ideal for the bohemian look of the engagement shoot. The team was almost complete. Almost.
I really really really wanted an ombré cake and I knew just the person to ask. One of my brides from last summer is an amazing vegan baker. The dessert table at her wedding was featured on Style Me Pretty and pinned all over the place. Her new company Kerissa Bakes is already making a name for itself and I can personally vouch for the fact that the ombré chocolate cake and the polka dot almond cookies she made for this party were absolutely delicious. There wasn’t a single piece left over at the end of the night. Not a crumb.
Then there were the flowers. I’m obsessed with garden roses and jasmine so those were a given. Then I got incredibly lucky and scored some green centered ranunculus at the market. I’d seen them before on the cover of Martha Stewart Weddings but never in person and they were just gorgeous. Beautiful colors and frilly petals and wonderful black centers. Wow. So I spray painted some vintage vases and mason jars gold and got to work.
This shoot was filled with DIY projects of which the fabric tassels and the crepe paper chandelier were my favorites. I found the tutorial for the fabric tassels on Pinterest (and my advice is to save yourself hours by buying a rotary cutter for $20) and talked my husband into helping me twist the crepe paper garlands while he watched ESPN one evening. I loved how they looked hanging from the restaurant’s wrought iron chandelier.
And then there was a party…
Seattle Vendor Credits –
Photography: Chantal Andrea Photography
Floral, Prop Styling and Event Design: Finch & Thistle Event Design
Stationery: LaHappy
Desserts: Kerissa Bakes
Venue: Via Tribunali Georgetown
- { Monday, May 21, 2012 }
Published: Melrose Market Studios Shoot on Wedding Chicks
- category: Home, press, Styled Inspiration Shoot
The Melrose Market Studios shoot we designed and styled back in April is featured on Wedding Chicks today! Please take a look at all the pretty, soft vintage details here and leave us some love in the comments section!
Two local photographers I know and admire have set up a new photography business, Lightning Bolts of Love and asked me to help them with flowers for their website shoot. I was thrilled to work with them both on this new venture and am super excited to see a different look and style of photography come to the Northwest. Take a look through the images below and if you are looking for an edgier take on the typical wedding look, give Kip Beelman or Jeramie Shoda a shout via their website: www.lightningboltsoflove.com.
- Tagged: edgy bridal bouquet, finch and thistle, lightning bolts of love, modern bridal bouquet, seattle wedding flowers
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Two summers ago, I worked with my friend Willi Galloway and photographer Jim Henkens to style a photo shoot for Willi’s book, Grow, Cook, Eat. You may remember that I posted some behind-the-scenes images from that shoot here. Well Willi’s book came out at the beginning of this year and is already on its third printing! It’s a beautiful book with helpful gardening tips for growing all kinds of fruits and veggies and recipes for eating all parts of the plants. I could not be more proud of my friend and encourage you all to pick up a copy at your local Anthropologie, West Elm, Williams Sonoma, Amazon and select local bookstores.
- Tagged: finch and thistle, gardening book, Grow Cook Eat, prop styling seattle, vegetable gardening, Willi Galloway
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…I’ve been playing with flowers in the studio, dreaming of Africa, playing in Portland, Paris and Amsterdam, designing summer weddings and spring parties, and styling several gorgeous shoots…almost in that order. What about you?
*did you know you can follow us on Instagram? Check out @finchandthistle for real time updates on our work, the studio and life in general!
*via Angela + Evan Photography*
*via Abbey Hepner Photography*
See why I’ve been so bad about blogging lately?
- Tagged: paris flea markets, spring centerpieces, Styled Shoot, teardrop bouquets
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- { Tuesday, April 24, 2012 }
Kerissa + Chris: Neutral Elegance at Hotel Alexis
- category: floral design, Home, Weddings
To say that Kerissa was a DIY bride is a major understatement. Kerissa and her family hand crafted every single element of her wedding down to the vegan cake table. Every. Single. One. She scoured the interwebs for vintage keys, milk glass vases and shutters for the escort card display, baked the cookies and desserts, crafted fabric pom-poms and paper peonies, stitched button covered napkin rings and table decor….and on and on. The only thing left to do – her flowers (although her uncle did grow all the white dahlias that we used). Needless to say, I was not surprised to see the gorgeous details on Style Me Pretty a few weeks ago and I want to share some of them with you here.
Kerissa chose a beautiful neutral color palette that looked wonderful against the exposed brick and chandeliers at Seattle’s Hotel Alexis and made all the hand crafted details shine.
The dessert table was surely the pièce de resistance of the night. Kerissa is a talented vegan baker (and available for weddings and parties…more on that later) and she poured her heart into the display for the sweets and cookies. I also loved that she incorporated beef jerky sticks for her husband Chris even though it didn’t match the color or food scheme. Marriage is all about giving and compromise, right?
The tables all had vases of tissue flowers and real flowers to add freshness and color to the evening. Kerissa’s uncle presented me with buckets and buckets of beautiful organically grown dahlias which I incorporated in the centerpieces and bridal bouquets. In fact, they were so organic that a lot of little earwigs also partied at Hotel Alexis that day.
It would be remiss of me to mention the beautiful images taken by the very talented and very sweet Abbey Hepner. She captured the mood of the day perfectly and has many, many more images from this Alexis Hotel wedding on her blog.
And about all that baking…Kerissa was kind enough to work with me on a styled shoot and party a couple of weeks ago that I will be sharing here soon. Her cake and cookies were so delicious that there wasn’t a single crumb left to take home at the end of the night. Here’s a sneak peek from the Finch & Thistle Instagram account…
*all wedding images courtesy of Abbey Hepner*
- { Thursday, February 16, 2012 }
Published: Style Me Pretty, Twice As Nice
- category: floral design, Home, press, Style Me Pretty, Styled Inspiration Shoot
We are thrilled to have had both a styled shoot and a wedding featured on our favorite wedding blog Style Me Pretty in the last two weeks. In case you missed them, our Winter Farm shoot was featured last week and Chris and Kerissa’s Alexis Hotel wedding was on there yesterday. There are too many amazing images to share so I will post Chris and Kerissa’s wedding separately.
I styled and designed the shoot based on Chantal’s original, rather tongue-in-cheek, root vegetable Pinterest board. The Root Vegetable title was supposed to throw people off the scent and instead became the primary inspiration for the farm shoot! I used striped kraft paper from Packaging Specialties instead of table linen and secured it to the table with fabulous gold flecked butcher’s twine. I had great fun in Spokane over Thanksgiving sourcing vintage bowls and pails and found a lot of the amazing props hiding in the old barn at the farm itself. The vegetables were actually from my own garden!
I wanted to flowers to be very rich and vibrant because I knew the likelihood of gloomy winter weather so I used deep burgundy, reds and purples with paler greys and lilac to contrast. I loved the ornamental cabbages instead of peonies or garden roses. They just fit so well with the theme but were still soft and pretty and I used lots of grasses, berries, herbs and foliage for a country, wildflower style bouquet.
We’re back from our amazing trip to Africa! I’ll share some pictures when I’ve had time to catch up on the hundreds of emails and voice mails that were waiting for me back at the office, but in the meantime here’s a set of pictures guaranteed to mak
e you smile.
Back in November we did a 1961 Mad Men themed birthday party for a client on Mercer Island. Decorations consisted mainly of smoking accoutrements: candy cigarettes, bubblegum cigars, cigarette holders, chocolate cigars, vintage glass ashtrays etc with a few flowers thrown in here and there for good measure! I scoured estate sales and thrift stores for retro decor and worked with Kip Beelman to set up a fabulous photo backdrop so guests could do the twist with Sophia Loren. DJ Tony Schwartz played hits from the 50’s and 60’s that kept guests on the dance floor and he was assisted by Shake Bartenders who provided the smoky signature cocktails. The amazing spread was catered by Ristorante Doria and the bold polka dot and jewel tone linens came from BBJ. If only Don and Betty had put in an appearance…
- Tagged: 1960's party, finch and thistle, mad men party, retro party, seattle event design
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