Mayesh Design Star: Dried Hanging Installation

Hey everyone, this is Anthony Maslow with The Boy Who Cried Flowers, your Mayesh design star for 2020. Thank you so much for tuning in today and thank you Mayesh for providing this amazing product. Today we're going to be working on a dried installation as you can see attached to my head right here. I will not be the installation but we will be making one for you today. To get started for today, we're going to create a mold of chicken wire to hang from this piece of wire we have here, which brings me into some of the tools that you'll be needing to do an installation like this. Here we have fallen working with some chicken wire. This is a coated chicken wire. It's not so important to use a coated one for drier materials but definitely for some more fragile stems. We've got our heavy duty snips to cut through some of the dried product. Some more wire. There are some more small stems that we will be wiring to the mold of chicken wire that we create. Wire cutters and we've got some thick industrial wire like so. So it's always important to have a team when you're working on a dried installation or any installation for that matter that's going to be hung and a little on the larger side. So Fallen's here creating a mold for us right now and instead of creating just a simple ball, we're going to create something with a little more shape that we can attach to this. That way we have a little more of a organic and fluid movement when it comes to this build out. So for this we're just sausaging this chicken wire roll by twisting the ends together and this is going to make sure that this is really nice and secure. If you're looking for added support you can simply cut some wire and stitch it right through and some of the weaker points and just bind that wire. So as you can see we didn't just simply ball this up. We've kept some space in here and throughout here that we can build out and onto. Because I'm working with dried products there's no need to worry about any kind of water source or anything like that. So I'm going to go in and start with some hanging pieces. I really want this to be an experiential build out and I want to have a lot of fun with it. So I want to have drama and texture and give it some movement throughout. During this build out you may notice that there are some stems sticking out here. That's okay. At the end we'll go in and trim all of that up making sure that they're in there securely as well as not showing. All these stems going through too will also lend their hand in helping other stems stick in this design. I'm a big fan of dried installs. I think they're a really great way to showcase natural beauty in a different way. The install that we're working on today is great for any place that wants to have something that they don't want to refresh weekly but they want it to last a while. This can last months and even years if you're using the right product. We've also seen a huge rise in request or dry materials as a florist. I think it shows in you know places like the flower market and you know where you're able to get them. So right now I'm going in and touching it up with some dried fern. These are just something to be obsessed with. They're so fun you almost see right through them like lace. So I think it adds a really cool texture to see this dripping in and out of it too. So as I'm choosing my product I'm paying close attention to the direction and movement. This stem is the perfect stem for me because I want something to kind of bow out and down and this just naturally has that shape. You could also manipulate pieces. This piece had a nice center but I kind of just want these two points. So I'm going to bring these two points in the design and just remove this center but save it so that I can utilize it as well. So these are some dried bleached fan palms. I'm going to use these for some height in this arrangement and I'm going to start by placing them up and out. When you're working with products like this a lot of the times I like to use a bigger snip. They have really strong hardened stems so you might need a little stronger of a tool to cut those guys down. I like to take a step back for my work just to assess the shape, color, and movement just to make sure that I'm moving in the right direction. All right sorry I'm taking all this out. Not a fan. So I'm working with this grass and as you can see there's a lot of little pieces that make up these gorgeous bunches. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut them to my desired length and I'm going to wire them off and this is just going to help keep it in place for me. So at this point I'm really happy with the shape and the general movement of this install. So what I'm going to start doing is adding in some of my fresh flowers and filling out this base. So I'm going to start with a handful of carnations and these are so great. I love carnations because they don't need to be tubed. They'll last a good amount of time and they're hardy flowers. So I'll just open them up a little bit which you can do by opening or twisting the necks of the flower and just patting them open really gently. So I'm going to create an in and out texture with these carnations meaning some of them will sit out a little further and some of them will sit in a little closer. And you can see with these three here we've just layered them at different levels giving it that in and out texture. So from here I'm going to move on to adding some roses in here and these roses have this blush touch I'd say just a little bit in there and I think it's going to really accentuate the carnations we have and also lend a hand into the color palette of this dried. So I'm going to go back to this grass again and use this less focused as little touches. Now I'm going to add some more textural pieces. These guys are great. I believe they're bleached protea and these are going to help fill in any of those holes in there. All right to finish my design off I'm going to go in and just fill in the base with any of these carnations I have left over. And done! Thank you so much for tuning in today. Here's our finished design. A beautiful hanging installation. I was saying how gorgeous this would be inside of a store as a chandelier with some lighting inside. You know it would just be so fun and enchanting. Thank you again Mayesh and to my wonderful team. Without you guys I couldn't be here today. Thanks again everyone. We'll see you soon.