2012 AIFD Student Competition

2012 AIFD Symposium in Miami.. My final year of Student competition.

Student Orientation.. Check

PFDE arrangements.. Viewed

Gayoung and I brainstorming in the room... Check

Sleep.. Check (not enough)

Banana, Tools, Jacket.. Check

We enter the flower room and see our flowers, hard goods and accessories we'll be working with. Our advisors advised and nervousness is expressed.. Then 8:00 am arrives and the time starts to begin working on the Buffet arrangement...

45 mins..

15 mins

TIME!!
Here is my piece

One piece of advice I could give is to go with your first instinct and not to second guess yourself... which is what happened to this piece in a nutshell.. good thing was that they liked it enough to give me 8th place ;)

Moving on

Bouquet arrangement! The only piece I came in with a plan for... I had an aha moment when I was creating one day and played around with something and created this cascadeish crescent bouquet

I figured the one thing I knew we would probably get was Roses.. so I thought this would be a safer (time effective) bouquet route to go.. Here is my finished bouquet..

Lesson learned from this bouquet was repetition and detail..
Pay attention to both.. be cohesive and focus on your details.. 6th place on this piece :)

And the next category..
The Sweetheart table piece

Dimensions to stay in: 12"x12"x12"
go out of those perameters and your disqualified..

Ready - Set - Start

It seemed like I had a lot of time to create this piece.. so much so that I made two.. The first one I made I just wasn't feeling how cheap it looked.. the colors the texture, something wasn't sitting right with the piece so I went in a different direction. Remembering the advice I received to do things simple with clean lines I made this piece

I loved it but I just wasn't sure if it was too simple.. I did get a lot of great reviews on this piece at the student competition reception [where we all displayed our competition pieces] Special thanks to Stacey Carlton AIFD for being a great inspiration and the words of wisdom :)

This piece got me

First Place!!

So exciting especially because this was my last year to compete!!

Heres a pic from the awards ceremony

SO Happy!! :)

Heres our College of Southern Nevada team of Student Competitors

Here are their pieces

Thanks for all the support I received.. Its Greatly appreciated!!

2012 AIFD SYMPOSIUM CALIENTE

It has definitely been awhile so why not come back with a bang! 2012 AIFD Symposium was in hot hot hot MIAMI! Hence the theme CALIENTE!
This is my photo journey :)
Bye for now Vegas

Right after our student Orientation we went straight to the PFDE room which held all the arrangements from this years brave designers who tested to try and become AIFD!

Good Luck to everyone that tested, I hope you hear the great news and we will see you in Viva Las Vegas!

The next day was competition time! Bright and early in the morning! Since I plan to do a post dedicated to the competition I'll just attach a few photos for now...

Congrats to all my fellow student competitors everyone did amazing!

Our Student Chapter Advisors and our College of Southern Nevada team!

As usual the Lobby of the Hyatt Regency was DECKED out with fabulous flowers in ingenious creations and designs!

Moving on to one of my favorite things about symposium, the Partners Expo! The ballroom was filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling with all of the latest products the floral industry has to offer! From the bling from Fitz, and great vessels from Accent Decor to the gorgeous flowers from Mayesh, United Floral Exchange and Green Valley floral!

And these are Mayesh's "Bat Flowers" super cool!

Then it was all about the learning, inspiring and creating going on from one artist to the next! Everyone who presented this year did such a great job! Here are some pictures from some of the great programs presented this year.

To finish things off here are a few pics from the great dinner and lunch events!

ADIOS!