When Andrew bought the house, I dreamed of setting up an easel in front of our sliding glass doors and painting all the flowers in our garden. We don’t have the flowers yet, but he bought me paints, canvas, and brushes, and picked up an old easel at his parent’s house. I’m still recovering from my big dig in the front garden and I was in need of a good creative project on a dreary Monday afternoon.

I would call myself a crafter before an artist. I didn’t take art classes in high school that weren’t mandatory, and the only theory I know is from floral design courses, which I never really followed anyway. But I love a little craft project, usually cardboard based (FREE!!) More than anything I want to be able to fill our house with the things we have made, and have art covering every inch of wall space. So while I create our garden, I want it to inspire art for our home.

Of course my inspiration for basically everything comes from flowers. And I thought my shopping cart full of spring bulbs would be an excellent muse for my first painting. I like the idea of being able to plant spring bulbs and when they bloom I bunch them up to make a bouquet that mimics the painting. Originally I had in mind making a cloudy romantic background with all the colors blurring together, but since I’m not familiar with painting techniques yet and decided to use a kitchen sponge.. that did not work out for me this time. But what was working was a bright and funky zig zag pattern that I kind of love. Not an ideal setting for a classic floral arrangement though.

When I ran upstairs to grab a hair clip a painting of simple tulips I brought from home caught my eye. It wasn’t much of a picture, just a few brush strokes that mimic’d a Donald Robertson painting I had seen and wanted to recreate. I thought for a second it might be easier to just cut these out and glue them onto the canvas. Then, also in the spirit of Donald Robertson, I realized I could use a little bit of my favorite medium, precious cardboard, to do just that. I was thinking this over while finishing up a box of cereal for lunch. Which also brought to mind another favorite artist of mine, Austen Zombres, who uses cardboard and paper to create recycled collages. That’s what led me to my cardboard flowers. So I started to get to work on my choco shells.

For the blossoms I painted classic spring blooms on the back of the boxes; peonies, hyacinths, and narcissus. For the stems I flipped it over and cut lengths from the green box, except for the muscari which i flipped back to the brown side. The barcode on the box looked like it could make a cutesy ribbon to “tie” around the vase. Given that the flowers and the background were so different in style, I chose to go a different route for my vase as well. Sticking with the black and white theme I tried to give it that 2D look with simple, cartoonish outline and finished it with the barcode ribbon.

Andrew said I should add a little pedestal underneath the vase which I agree with, but I have mentally moved on from this project at this time. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed having a purely creative moment to myself. I’d love to continue painting flowers in this style, then grow them in our own garden. Also shout out to cardboard, the quintessential art supply. 🫶 Thanks for joining me on this little creative journey. And in a few months I’ll be posting the living counterparts to these silly little cardboard flowers.

Katy