Fiori Di Como, Bellagio Lobby ceiling, Las Vegas, NV

Chihuly Tropical flower from the Meijer Gardens

anonymous Chihuly flower

Chihuly at the Huntington Museum of Art

Chihuly Flower

Smaller Chihuly flowers

Ceiling flowers by Chihuly

Beautiful butterfly on Chiluly flower at the Franklin Park Conservatory

Chihuly's "Sun" from the Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, AZ

W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory, 1908 Victorian building, Wright Park, Tacoma WA, Dale Chihuly Glass Exhibit

If you’re interested in learning more about the artist, his work, and his process, check out this lecture with Dale at the Google offices from a couple of years ago. Head’s up: it’s over an hour long, so be careful when you start it.

Image Credits:

Photo 1: bcgrote
Photo 2: Ellenm1
Photo 3: Matthew Hoelscher
Photo 4: Jennifer Pauley
Photo 5: Eric Frommer
Photo 6: Kevin Saff
Photo 7: Jill Clardy
Photo 8: Tina Lawson
Photo 9: Thomas23
Photo 10: Michael Martin

]]> http://www.bloomin.com/blog/2010/08/27/friday-flower-dale-chihulys-handblown-glasswork/feed/ 0 http://www.bloomin.com/blog/2010/08/20/friday-flower-petunia/ http://www.bloomin.com/blog/2010/08/20/friday-flower-petunia/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:46:10 +0000 Bloomin' Flower Cards http://www.bloomin.com/blog/?p=746 The name of the flower comes from the French word for tobacco, “petun.”

Click image for full size

Petunias make great floral ground cover due to their long flowering period and low-maintenance nature. Botanically they are closely related to tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, deadly nightshades, and chili peppers. They come in every color of the rainbow, including some varieties with star patterns, vein patterns, and solids.

Petunias are very susceptible to blight and rot due to moisture retained on the leaves and flowers, so take care when watering. Watch out for pesky slugs and aphids. Originally native to South America, Petunias were brought to Europe for the first time in 1823.

click image for full size

And finally, here’s a cool time lapse video of a blooming Petunia:

Other Famous Petunias include:

Porky the Pig’s girlfriend, Petunia Pig.

Petunia the goose, a  children’s book.

Got any Petunia stories? Leave them in the comments.

Have a great weekend!

Before planting any seeds you’re unsure of, be sure to check with your local extension service to avoid planting any invasive species. Definitely stay away from those. In some places, it’s illegal to plant or even possess seeds from invasive plant species.

1. Choose a mix that’s suited for your region. Some mixes include seeds which are native to many regions, so that something is sure to grow no matter where the seeds are planted. Know which region you live in, and get a mix with seeds good for growing in this region.

2. The best time to plant depends on your regional weather and climate. Cooler climates see better results from plantings in spring, early summer, or late fall. Hold off on planting in the fall until seeds are sure not to germinate until the spring. Plant during the cooler months in milder climates, fall through spring.

3. Soil preparation. Clear the area to be planted of current vegetation, which will compete with your wildflowers for nutrients and water. Till or scrape the soil to break up the top layer. Spread the seeds according the the recommendations of your mix. Heavily compacted soil will need to be plowed under for aeration.

4. Apply the seeds according the directions of your mix. Some wildflower seed mixes are designed for wider distribution, while some are better suited for smaller areas. Mixing the seeds with sand in a 1 or 2 parts sand, 1 part seeds ratio will help distribute the seeds more evenly. Use your hands or use a cyclone spreader for best dispersement.

5. Some wildflower seeds do well in poor soil, while others need a nutrient supplement. If you’re unsure of your soil nutrient level, you can have it tested at your local extension service. See the link above to find out which region you’re in.

6. Wildflowers can be more robust than other types of plants once they’re established. However, while they’re still sprouting, even wildflowers are as fragile and needy as everything else. Take care watering them until they are well established.

7. Weeds can be especially nasty neighbors to new wildflowers. If you can remove weeds prior to putting down the wildflower seeds, the better the wildflowers will do.

8. A mix of annual and perennial wildflower seeds will do much better over the long run than one type of flower. As the annuals are sprouting and blossoming first, the perennials are busy getting themselves situated to produce blooms for the next season. You get the benefit of the annuals now and the perennials will show up later.

Seeds can be such a magical thing. That doesn’t mean there’s no logic to them. Follow these 8 guidelines, and you’ll improve your odds for a great crop every time you plant.

We constantly strive to figure out ways to refine and streamline printing on Bloomin seed paper. From different papermaking techniques to newer printing technologies, our goal is to make our customers’ finished products better, sharper, and more dynamic. Good design and layout is crucial part of printing on seed paper. We’d like to share some of the common issues we’ve seen in art submission to help you get the most from your final product:

1. Keep ink coverage below 20%.
2. If possible, avoid gradients, fills, and photos.
3. Use a minimum font size of 8 pts.; 10 pt. for reversed text.
4. Avoid extremely fine detail.
5. Be responsible with your border and line use.
6. Include planting instructions.
7. Two sides of seeded paper are not created equal.
8. One or two color job? Consider letterpress.
9. There’s no controlling seed placement.
10. No PMS matching on seed paper.

1. Keep ink coverage below 20%.

Much like a paper towel, our handmade seed paper is very porous and absorbent. The machines we use to print onto the paper use ink-jet technology to spray water-based ink onto the page. When you have lots of ink coverage (large blocks of color, photographs, and other solid pieces of art,) the ink will soak into the paper much more than it would onto regular paper. This can lead to a final print that is “muddy” and unreadable. Consider inverting boxes or fills (would a white box with a blue outline work, instead of a blue box that’s filled in?) and eliminating large photos and other elements which require full ink coverage. (Please add that full coverage alters the viability of the seeds.)

2. Avoid gradients, fills, and photos.

In addition to the issues mentioned in #1 above about overall ink coverage, gradients, fills, and photos can be problematic for other reasons. Photos, gradients and fills can come out looking splotchy–especially people’s faces–due to the uneven nature of the seeds embedded in the paper (see #9 below.) If your design calls for large blocks of color, consider reversing the design so that the block is outlined instead of filled. This limitation applies regardless of what color your block of artwork is. Changing a blue block of color to yellow will only mean that the lines will now be dark yellow instead of dark blue.

3. Avoid extremely fine detail.

Small details in photos, logos, or other artwork–yes, even line art–tend to lose resolution when printed onto our porous, handmade seeded paper. While we don’t have a threshold for a specific level of detail at which things start to break down, our art team will let you know if you submit artwork that’s too small or not suitable for seed paper printing.

4. Use fonts larger than 8 points.
More if the text is reversed.

Think of letters like little pieces of artwork, which get assembled into different combinations to make words. Tiny little images.(Like these short, punchy sentences. Please shape some of the other text around this style.) The same detail that gets lost in small, highly-detailed images from the paper soaking up the ink, is lost when text is too small. To fix this problem, the smaller your font is, the thinner a font you’ll want to use. When using reversed text (white or light text on a dark background,) you’ll need an even bigger, thinner font. This 8 point minimum isn’t hard and fast. Some fonts work as small as 5 or 6 points, and some don’t work well at all below 10 or 12 points. It depends on the font, the color, and the distribution of seeds on the paper (see #9 below.) In general, most fonts should work fine at 8 points are larger.

5. Use responsible borders and lines.

Because every sheet of Bloomin’s seed print paper is full of wildflower seeds, a lot of the production process here is done by hand.

The paper is handmade. The sheets are hand-fed into the machines that print onto the paper. The printed sheets are hand-fed into our die-cutting machines. Every piece is examined by hand to ensure there were no printing or cutting errors. The pieces are hand-assembled into the finished product. Finally, the pieces are hand-packed into boxes to be shipped out.

All this hand-processing means that some graphic elements work better than others. Lines that are parallel to and near the edge of a piece can can exaggerate that the artwork on your piece and the cut edges of your piece will not be 100% lined up and square. Mathematical precision is NOT a hallmark of a handmade product.

Another thing to keep in mind is that registration isn’t 100% from from front to back. When printing onto the second side, keeping any art elements away from the edges will help make the piece look better in the end. Our art department can help with this if you have any concerns.

6. Include planting instructions.

Think about the person who receives your seed paper card. Will they know that they can plant it if you don’t mention it? Unless they’re an avid gardener, they may not realize that they can plant the paper, and flowers will grow. Feel free to use any of our suggested planting instructions.

You took the time to have your card printed on seed paper, why not show it off?

7. Two sides of seeded paper are
not created equal.

When we’re making Bloomin seed paper, the wet pulpy sheets are dried on pieces of canvas. (Here’s a recent news story about us, where you can see the process in action.) As the paper dries, the seeds start to show up as texture on the front of the sheet. Once the paper is fully dry, the paper is peeled off of the canvas. This leaves a slight imprint of a canvas pattern (or “fossil’) on the back of the paper.

So, there are two distinct sides to each sheet of paper.
Generally speaking, you’ll want to print your front side artwork onto the front side of the paper. Occasionally, a customer will have artwork which will work better if we print with the paper “upside down,” or with the canvas fossil on the front, and the seed texture on the back. If you’re not sure, we can help you determine which option is best for your artwork.

8. One or two color job?
Consider Letterpress printing.

Letterpress printing is a method of printing in which ink is rolled over raised letters on a metal plate, and the plate is pressed into paper. Remember Johannes Gutenberg and his moveable type? We use very close to the same method he did. We have better technology, and don’t have to hand set small type, thankfully. The look and feel of letterpressed seed paper is amazing. The debossing effect adds something ethereal to the printed artwork. There are some things to keep in mind when letterpress printing, but it’s more than we can cover in this post. We’ll get to that soon.

9. Wildflower seeds are wild.
(We can’t control their placement.)

Every square inch of Bloomin seed paper has between 10 and 20 wildflower seeds in it, which are added when the paper is still pulp. In the video I linked to under #7 above, you can see the tank full of water, paper pulp and seeds, and how the seeds are stirred around and dispersed into the paper. In effect, the seeds go where they want. This means that when it comes time to print your headshot onto the seeded paper, a random seed may line up with the tip of your nose, or the end of your chin. It’s happened before. It’s definitely not flattering, but there’s not much we can do about it. If your design relies on polka dots (or halftones, for example) which are about the same size as our seeds, then the seeds can wreak havoc on your design in the end. This is another argument to exclude fine detail #3.

10. We can’t match PMS colors on seeded paper.

Unfortunately, the machines that we use to print onto the seeded paper won’t accept PMS inks. They use 4-color process print techniques. We can get pretty close on most colors, but there are some Pantone colors which just don’t translate well to CMYK. If you’re concerned about a specific color, please be sure to note this on your order so we can test the color for you.

Let the seed paper be the hero.

Remember, you’ve chosen to use very special paper for your piece. The actual medium itself is special before your message even gets printed onto it. Don’t underestimate the power that paper with seeds in it can have to further your earth-friendly message.
Keep these 10 tips in mind, and you’ll help us to help you make the best seeded paper product you can get.

For questions about any of these, please email josh@bloomin.com.

Photo by Bernt Rostad

We’re packing up and getting ready to head to the hottest promotional products event of the summer: the ASI Chicago Show.  We’re excited to personally connect with all the distributors we speak to by phone almost daily.

Come by booth 2029 and ask about our show special!

We now offer our seeded paper with an herb mix of basil, chives, and parsley seeds, as well as two vegetable papers (orange carrots and green lettuce) as stock items.

Here’s a recipe for some great Carrot Oatmeal Cookies (from 101 Cookbooks) for when those carrots are ready:

Carrot Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Photo by Dalyn Luedtke

After your initial batch experiment with the type of nuts/seeds you use. Lemon zest, clarified butter, and olive oil might be ingredients to play around with as well – but I haven’t tested them in this recipe. And I have to say, I love the flavor and richness the coconut oil brings to these cookies. If you have a hard time finding whole wheat pastry flour, feel free to substitute unbleached all-purpose flour.

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 cup rolled oats
2/3 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup real maple syrup, room temperature
1/2 cup unrefined (fragrant) coconut oil, warmed until just melted
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Preheat oven to 375F degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and oats. Add the nuts and carrots. In a separate smaller bowl use a whisk to combine the maple syrup, coconut oil, and ginger. Add this to the flour mixture and stir until just combined.

Drop onto prepared baking sheets, one level tablespoonful at a time, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie. Bake in the top 1/3 of the oven for 10 – 12 minutes or until the cookies are golden on top and bottom.

Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

What’s  your favorite recipe that includes basil, chives, parsley, carrots, or lettuce?

Bad news – it’s  5:30 am at the paper making facility.

It was awesome. Satellite dishes in the parking lot and everything. Don did a good job. He barely looks sleepy.

Thanks for coming by Bloomin Gregg, it was great to meet you – Tom

Where in the town is Gregg Moss

If you get a chance check out the clip below.

http://www.9news.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=102791170001#/Where+in+the+Town/102791170001

During one of our weekly meetings last summer Don and I discussed the idea of putting some custom invitations back in the mix. I mean, how hard could it be? We have  a competent and growing art department, eager sales team, and a group of customer service people that just love to help people. To top it off we were moving forward with a serious website development and media company called Mango Media Corporation that could put together some cool online invitation customization tools for our redesigned website. We thought we should be able to have this whole thing up and running by late winter, just in time for the spring invitation season.

We had a BIG company meeting to tell everyone what we were up to, that we were moving forward with a whole new project – CUSTOM INVITATIONS. Then the development team rolled up their sleeves, kicked off their high heels and got to work. It didn’t seem that complex at first, an invite here, a response card there. A splash of color on the save the date card that matches the seed paper place cards. But wait, what should be seed paper and what should be card stock, and how much seed paper is too much. Is 80# cover stock thick enough? How many colors should we offer? How many envelope sizes do we need to stock? How do we demonstrate that on the website? What, we can only buy that 120# cover from the mill but they have to make it first, maybe next month. Aahhhhhhhhhhhhh!º•ª¬˙ #%$#!!!

Saying we underestimated the complexity of offering a plantable wedding invitation line is a gross understatement. Hey, if it were easy everyone would do it right.

Thanks to our outstanding employees like:

Abby Simon

Brijanna Carbone

Emily Burrows

we are getting this done, and done well. Hey Don Martin you have done a great job on this too. Thanks to you all from the rest of us at Bloomin.

Although I say done, this is just the beginning of some great wedding and other custom invitations. Although Mango will hopefully have our new website up soon, for now please go to www.bloomininvites.com to see our designs and learn more about bloomininvites.

Our first complete wedding book.

It may not be perfect, but it is a great first book.

Boulder County Business Report

Click on the link and it should take you right there: http://www.bcbr.com/article.asp?id=51374

They also posted a short video on youtube. If you get a chance, check it out. Thanks – Tom Noyes

Today I came in to work to find this little message on one of our picnic tables.

I was inspired! Even though we are overwhelmed with work, and last minute jobs can get a little frustrating, It appears that we have a lot of happy people around here. It might be hard work and long hours sometimes, but we have a lot of good people here and we love what we do. I love my job.

Tom Noyes