The Floral CEO

 Hello Flower friends, this is Jen and on this week's mini, so I wanna talk installations. I've been putting together the design boards and collaborating with some of the other vendors for the Installation Rockstar Workshop, uh, in March 10th and 11th in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I am so excited, but it made me really think.

A lot of these things that I've learned over all these years, and a lot of the tips and tricks have made me more confident going into. Really just tackling just about any installation. But I wanted to share a few of them with you today, and I'm actually linking the resources in the show notes because I wanna spill a little bit of the tea of what we talk about and what I actually show you how to use and some of the tools and things like that that you get out of the Installation Rockstar Workshop.

So the first thing that is kind of my go-to, and this is whether or not if you are a flower foam person, um, or you are using foam alternatives, um, on Amazon, it. In my experience, it's actually cheaper to buy your foam cages or your empty cages. So I'm going to link, um, the, these foam cages that I've recently purchased, they are half the cost of at my wholesaler and I use one brick trays.

They are one brick, um, foam cages, and. These were like around $6 a cage. And I have been paying $12 a cage. Even when I'm buying a case, I only get a, you know, 15% case discount. So significant savings, almost 50%. These are my go-to for almost any installation because for one, they really pack well. Inboxes, uh, when you're transporting your installations, I personally make 90% of my installations in my studio and then transport them to, um, whatever event.

And I think that that helps me, for one, be able to use labor that, um, you know, might not necessarily be like a skilled installation designer. But also I am able to mitigate the stress. It is stressful to make a installation completely onsite. It I. I just don't want that stress, and I honestly don't want that stress for you because it doesn't feel good.

It literally is to me personally, like I just, it's, it's overwhelming and sometimes, especially if you are trying something new. Estimating your, uh, you know, product correctly or estimating, you know, like the bunches maybe are, are a little bit, um, you know, smaller this week or maybe the weight is a little bit off.

I mean, there could be a million things that might not add up if you are new at this. And so I like to just reduce all of that, worry, all of that. A kind of crazy feeling that you potentially might have and just do it here in my studio and all the little finishing touches that make something look cool, which I often think, you know, when you're adding dimension to an installation and you're having a flower jet really far out, or you're putting like a really interesting branch in, or a really interesting like draping, flower, whatever that is like.

You can do those little small touches on site, but I love really maximizing, you know, that that time in my studio to have all those things done, have them packed up and have them ready to go to make game day successful then. My next kind of tip, um, that I absolutely love is the urban trapeze cable stops.

And these again, are listed in the, um, show notes, but if you have tackled hanging something like chicken wire and you have used the airplane cable that many floors use for hanging installations. It really sucks to use all the old school manual adjustments, um, that you had to get a screwdriver out for that.

Potentially if you didn't get it to seat in properly, you could have your whole insulation come crashing down. And I personally, for all my airplane cable use, plastic coated, I think plastic coated helps put another grippy barrier and helps you. I kind of put the brakes on, um, that friction and potentially the lack of friction.

Um, because something smooth naturally could have more give to it, could wiggle, could come loose a little bit easier. And so I love using plastic coated air airplane cable, and. I love these urban trapeze cable stops because you're basically, there's no crimping tools needed. You don't need a bunch of things other than like whatever you're cutting your, your length of, um, your wire at.

And so you need a proper tool to of course, make those cuts. But. It. It is such an easy tool to use, so if you haven't ever checked out these urban Ree cable stops, go ahead to the show notes. Click on the link and go check it out On Amazon, I am a big fan and they make installations so much easier. All right.

The next thing that I think like most people use these, but they don't use the right ones, and that is zip ties. I see a lot of people basically making these little like. You know, they have nine inch, um, let's say nine inch zip ties, but they realistically need a like 30 inch zip tie or a 24 inch zip tie.

And so they've pieced together like four nine inch zip ties. There are several reasons why this is not a great idea. For one, it's going to be really hard to get a really snug, um, squeeze on those zip ties because you're, you're tightening a million of them. Then on top of it, you are adding more nubs because you're adding the stopper, um, that you're inserting and actually moving the zip tie with, you're adding multiple of those.

Also smaller zip ties are skinnier. They have less surface area, which means less grip, less of a a thing to help grip your installation, your chicken wire, your floral cage, whatever it is to your surface. So I love to use thicker. Zip ties and in the show notes again, I have linked one of my go-to 30 inch zip ties and it is a really nice and thick, really helps you be able to attach, um, to a bigger surface.

Uh, I usually am trying to figure out what size, zip tie I need by how wide. You know my structure that I'm attaching onto. So let's just say that you're adding onto an arbor, and each arbor is, you know, it's a six by six. So it's six by six square, um, structure. And so just going around that structure, you have 6, 12, 18, 24 inches.

Now we have to add. Your cage depth that you're adding, so you realistically should probably have a 36 inch zip tie if you're attaching a cage onto a six by six um, square structure. I like to go in and make sure that I have a long enough zip tie because there's nothing that sucks more than when you only have a itty bitty little thing up your end of your zip tie, and you're trying to get it tight.

And then you have to get your teeth in there, or you gotta try to get pliers in there to try to get it one or two notches. And I just don't trust one or two notches. I like to at least get it on my zip tie at least an inch, if not more. So you wanna make sure that you're using thicker zip ties when it makes sense for you and you're using thicker.

Zip ties when you are trying to hold weight in your installations. So again, head to the show notes, check those out. And then this is my last go-to hack that I wanna share for all things installation, because these are so versatile. I absolutely love these. I have I think, three sets of these, and these are.

Metal. Um, what is the official name? Let me get the official name. It's not very original, but, uh, square tan stands. So these are metal structures, metal stands that you can insert a two by four. So two by fours are nominal sizes. Uh, so there is, you know, sometimes a little bit of variation, but very easy can plunk in there at whatever height you need.

So let's just say you're doing an installation off a head table and you want flowers spilling off the head table onto the ground. You can put a 33 inch. Board in there, attach your cages accordingly, and then have a, you know, tray, one brick or two brick tray, uh, sitting on top of your table to help transition into this two by four, uh, that you can have completely done before you show up on site.

And. Oh, like looks great and is so heavy you guys not so heavy that you can't carry it because I can carry it very easily, but it is heavy duty. So like I have only one time and that's when I had a lot of weight on there. Have to put an additional weight. The bases are metal, the bases are heavy, and so that is going to help balance any weight from an installation and help you from not.

Falling forward or having your installation basically, um, goes flat. It also is great because, uh, you can go in and. Take this board out, which I like to do. I actually do not like in the studio like that to be just sitting inside the stand because then water can run down. So you can pull it out and set it on a table so your water is settling and you don't dry your installation out.

Then you can carry in this whole, let's just say broken arch. End of the table spilling off bar piece, whatever it is, you can carry that into your venue. 90% done just needing the little fluffs of touches and it is perfect. You can just walk in. Installation's done looks great. You slide it in there like the floral CEO that you are.

If you wanna learn more tips and tricks like this. I would love for you to come to the Installation Rockstar Workshop. The theme is Old Hollywood Glamor, and it's going to be so over the top. Beautiful. It is at Essence events. Uh, center in St. Paul, Minnesota. It's tucked away from all the craziness that you might have heard is going on in Minnesota and it is such a beautiful historic venue.

I absolutely, it's one of my favorite venues. And we have a head table installation. We have a hanging installation over our head table. We have, um. A cake installation, a dirty martini tower installation, and a ceremony location, uh, installation. It is going to be so beautiful. Go check it out at floral ceo.com/workshop and you can check out all three of the workshops coming up.

But this installation workshop, you'll walk away with a. Full portfolio because the gallery of the full style shoot that we're doing, which the model that we got for this workshop is so beautiful, is at your disposal. So. Head to floral ceo.com/workshop to check it out. I wanna see you there. It's going to be epic.

It is going, it's, it's one of my favorite workshops of the year for people who are really wanting to expand their design knowledge. And I am so excited about the theme too, because I mean, who doesn't love Journey Martinis and Pearls and Callie. So thank you so much for listening, flower Friend, and you have an amazing flower filled day.