Time to give your flowers a colorful new twist!
”This is a fun part because color gives you the opportunity to be very creative, inventive, and imaginative,” says Gretchen Sell, education and creative director of Design Master - a division of the Smithers-Oasis Company.
With 27+ years of experience Gretchen is the master of creative ways to use Design Master color spray paint.
She shares colorful suggestions for using floral spray to save time and money while:
• Accessorizing flower designs.
• Solving flower color problems.
• Upcycling aging products with a trendy new finish.
• Hiding flower blemishes on must-have fresh product.
Gretchen offered 10 Creative Ways to Use Design Master Paint with Gretchen Sell on our How We Bloom podcast. Here’s the list:
1. Create the color you need
• Color Infusion - infusing a blank white canvas with color.
• Color Shifting - blend a Spray Color with a colored flower to push the direction of blossom color.
• Monochromatic Shifts - same color family - darker spray/deeper value, lighter spray/softer value.
• Analogous Shifts of neighboring hues.
• Complementary Shifts and Split Complements. Side-by-side pairs make each other bright.
(For more definitions see Glossary of Color Terms.)
Photo: Design Master
2. Conceal blossom blemishes or hide imperfections
• Make the most out of your stock, reduce flower waste by hiding blemishes and imperfections
• Save money using Flat White for touch-ups on white blooms - roses, orchids, lilies, anthuriums.
• Keep flower’s same or natural color, metallicize, or create fantasy blends.
This is an important tip for wedding work. You often get an orchid or other flower that has a blemish, but you need to use that expensive product. Touch up with paint to reduce waste and save money.
Gretchen recommends using a pigmented Color Tool spray to help hide the blemish. Just For Flowers is translucent so you'll still see the surface detail (blemish) underneath. A Color Tool spray like Flat White on white flowers can conceal the blemish.
Hide a blemish by matching the natural color of the blossom or spraying it with a metallic or a color unnatural to the flower.
3. Expand creative boundaries to design unabashedly in any color
• Explore not-seen-in-nature flower colors.
• Spray the whole stem and bloom, use as a color design element.
For example, spraying an anthurium a bold color like Teal Blue. Cover it’s pistol with an upside-down water tube to protect its natural color.
4. Upcycle stagnant product, display items for fresh appeal.
• Sprays work on an abundance of hard surfaces including containers, ceramics, or baskets.
• Freshen with spray color to assist making slow-moving product look new and even trendy.
Photo: Design Master
Customers often think you’ve added new product when all you did was move store displays around.
Take it a step further, use color spray to update products you can no longer get full value from. Use
a new color to make old items look like something you can upcharge for to save your margin. Spray an obnoxious color with a new on-trend hue and turn that trash into cash!
5. Customize color for special requests including flowers and containers
• Energize interior displays. Personalize custom orders.
• Spray faux (aka silk) botanical flowers, foliages, and designs with fresh color.
Photo: Design Master
Medium bronze mums with Coral Bright equal warm muted orange.
Both wedding work and interior design projects often require the use of custom color. Drive impulse buys by painting or upgrading materials to a color that's trendy and new.
6. Create fall flower tones that go beyond gold, orange, burgundy, and brown
• Any palette can be pushed to autumn blossom with Absorbit Brownie (think carnation) recipe: 2 parts Holiday Red to 1 part YellowYellow and 1 part Teal Blue (per Jordan Statz).
• Thicket on deep red or purple mums deepens tones.
Color shift using complementary colors to tone flower colors for bridging colors in bouquets.
Extra coats deepen value - Red blooms with Peacock shifts to Burgundy, Delphinium Blue to Maroon
Lavender disbud mums with Red Clay, Honeycomb or Thicket.
Use Metallic colors on grasses.
Blend colors on blue and green hydrangea to create antique style blooms.
One of the most asked about solutions is how to emulate antique hydrangea. Take blue or green hydrangeas and blend in different hues. Color Tool sprays, and Just for Flowers, work with one another. You can layer the colors and create any kind of antique hydrangea you want. Just a little tip: Start with the Color Tool spray, and then Just for Flowers on top for shifting.
7. Winter Holiday shimmer beyond the can color
• Try a metallic base with Just for Flowers overlay on anthurium, flat foliage, pinecones or
lotus pod accessories.
Adding a wonderful shimmer can be a really fun shift for a holiday accent,” adds Gretchen.
8. Salt Blast Technique - Clear Finish Matte and baking soda
• Adds texture on surfaces. Create an aged glass effect on clear or colored glass by hand.
• Use as an upcycling tool to transform plastic urns with texture, then apply a metallic topcoat.
Photo: Design Master
When applying the Salt Blast technique, baking soda is the salt part of it. Apply Clear Finish Matte to a vase (or other item) spraying very close to the surface so it's wet. Sprinkle on baking soda. Turn your vase as you apply to cover all sides, and continue sprinkling baking soda over the wet surface until completely covered. Let dry for a bit, then come back with another coat of just the Clear Finish matte. Giving a nice seal to the process.
“This can create this really awesome look!” Suggests Gretchen. “Use it to upscale old vases. Store the baking soda in the freezer. It will have a few more clump, giving more variation to the textural surface.”
9. Faux Watercolor Silk Ribbon
• Take a standard double satin ribbon to a watercolor silk look alike!
• Apply two or three of your favorite spray color hues. Create a trendy new hair ribbon.
• Use acetone from a hardware store or nail polish remover to further blend the colors.
These designs can even be washed.
Photo: Design Master
”Watercolor silk ribbons are just absolutely fabulous and beautiful,” says Gretchen. “You can mimic that look using your standard double satin ribbon.”
Wearing latex gloves to protect your hands, take the ribbon and bunch it up into your hand and very closely spritz color into the ribbon. Use your thumbs to work the paint around, pulling it down the ribbon.
It may look a little splotchy the first time. Gather the ribbon again, spritzing another color onto some of the blank areas. Again, using your thumbs to blend the tonalities together. Apply two or three colors.
Use a bit of acetone to blend the colors seamlessly. You can wash the ribbons to remove the odor.
10. Painted foliages can be strong color elements in design
• Metallic-sprayed foliages add a wonderful, shimmery accent to designs that enriches it.
• Prime the foliage first with Super Silver or Flat White (Ace Berry) to achieve brightest color.
• Prime fluffy foliages such as plumosa or Ming fern with Premium Metals first.
• Then add quick coverage of any uncovered area for a gorgeous sculptural element.
Often, customers think that something metallic elevates the style of the design. ”You get more ‘oomph’ from your color when you have that metallic base,” explains Gretchen.
Why is Design Master Color spray is better for flowers than paint you can pick up at a local hardware store?
“Design Master, a made in the USA paint, was formulated 60+ years ago specifically for fresh flowers and other color solutions, for the floral industry,” explains Gretchen. ”You can be assured when you're applying Design Master color spray according to the directions, that your flowers will be safe.” You're enhancing the flower,
but not hurting the flower.
Gretchen suggests that when working with fresh flower products, you want to be 15 inches away from the blossom for safe application – to prevent petal freezing and ensure even color coverage.
Rather than a steady flow of spray coming out, giving a few little spritzes will give you a bit more control. Flowers, like orchids, have a translucency to them. You can spray the backside of the blossom to enhance the color. Allow the bloom to completely dry before refrigeration.
Gretchen shared 10 different creative techniques that can help you change the color of a flower for function, rescue, creativity, the enjoyment of a color, or for selling on-trend materials. You can use these tips as a springboard to more colorful ideas for designs.
Florists often use many of the same flower materials from season to season. How can you differentiate your floral materials to stand out quickly? Color is the most eye-catching element. When you do something unusual with color, it's sure to catch the attention of the client.
For more creative and colorful ideas visit Design Master’s newly updated website - dmcolor.com.
Try one of these techniques this week and tag us with your results!
Don’t forget to share the Floral Hub Blog (for readers), and How We Bloom podcast (for listeners), with your fellow flower lovers. The podcast is available on Buzzsprout, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.