“Our poser blooms allow you a stress-free completion date, with no unexpected surprises on your wedding day morning, since these pretties can be made well ahead of event time and easily stored in boxes,” she explains on her website. According to Kinney, her bouquets can easily be packed in suitcases, since many destination locations do not have a wide variety of selection to choose from on floral needs.

Her fake flowers are also lighter in weight and don’t easily stain fabrics in comparison to fresh flowers, with the added bonus that they are also allergy-friendly since they are unscented and pollen-free. “Some other reasons we are supporters of these fakers are the fact that they are more durable compared to fresh flowers, allowing your petals to stay pretty and perky in all climates and locations,” she notes.

Kinney’s original idea to start a faux flower business actually originated from her own wedding. “When I was planning my own wedding, I met with numerous fresh florists, but quickly learned my floral-vision was quite expensive,” she recalled. “My mom suggested that we explore faux blooms as an alternative so that I wouldn’t have to compromise my dream look. I’ll admit I was very hesitant to this idea. But I am so glad she did make that suggestion, because I instantly fell in love with the possibilities of the incredible selection out there!”

According to Kinney, family and friends at her wedding had zero idea poser-blooms were surrounding them when she said her vows. And so, after her wedding, she decided to start a website and design for other people’s weddings on a hobby-scale. This little faux floral business surprisingly blossomed pretty quickly. Judging by her Incredible variety, we can see why!

The post These Flower Arrangments Are Meant to Last appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Nowadays, with little over 50k followers on Instagram and clients that include Anthropologie, Hallmark, and the Land of Nod, her work is featured on a huge variety of products: from women’s and children’s wear to paper products, home furnishings, and giftware.

When it comes to her creative process, Johnson admits she relies on a heavy dose of intuition and spontaneity. “I like to explore a lot, try new materials, play with layers and texture, then let the outcome determine the finished piece,” she relayed. “I also like spontaneity. I’m not much of a planner.”

She adds that she never draws an outline or sketch beforehand – a remarkable statement if you take into account the amount of work she’s produced. “If something is going pear-shaped I like to push through and make it work and I think that by doing that I get interesting and unexpected results,” she notes. “But I’m also very organized and logical. I enjoy creating groups of related pieces – collections. Cohesiveness, harmonious color, a common thread that links all my work – these are all important to me.”

With creativity clearly running through her veins, Johnson says she doesn’t deal with artist block. “There are always too many ideas and not enough time,” she says. You’d want to follow her on Instagram.

The post Victoria Johnson Has Creativity Running Through Her Veins appeared first on PlayJunkie.

According to Phoenix, a central theme to her work and a huge inspiration is color. “Color, color, color!” she exclaimed once in an interview with Papirmass. “My work emerged from a desire to produce art as bright and as vibrant as I wanted. I love my day job, but sometimes I’m told to change my colors so they ‘don’t vibrate so much.’ I WANT my art to vibrate!”

According to Phoenix, exploring color in her pieces has always been her favorite part. Flowers come second. “I choose to paint flowers simply because they are an excellent vehicle for exploring color,” she admits. Most of the flowers and leaves are imagined, and act as a vehicle for her to create vibrant color relationships.

The finished result – lush and vibrant – has been featured on stationery, book covers, and embroidery, amongst other products, grabbing the attention of almost 40k followers on Instagram. She also sells her artwork as embellished art prints, using gold and neon paint to make each print rich and unique.  

“True creativity is like an itch that you LOVE to scratch using your curiosity,” says Phoenix. “You can just keep scratching it; it never gets old! That’s how color is for me. I’m curious about color, which makes me want to explore it and ‘get creative’ with it. Everyone has something they’re curious about, so I think everyone has that innate potential to explore that curiosity and in turn, be creative.”

The post Jess Phoenix’s Illustrations Are the Very Meaning of Flower Power appeared first on PlayJunkie.

According to her bio, her journey started with learning how to crochet and knit. Gradually, and after being exposed to botanical art, she started experimenting with dried flowers. She then came to develop a floral embroidery technique using real organic material as her thread – a skill she now passes onto others through classes and tutorials

“A lot of my ideas come from going for walks in the countryside near where I live, or things I grow in the garden,” she told The Italian Rêve. The garden is also where Prinku finds a lot of her materials. “I love working with the seasons,” she notes, “so whatever is in season is my favorite at that moment! Some flowers are better than others for particular purposes. For example, for floral embroidery hoops you want flowers with thin stalks and without particularly big heads. I’ve recently discovered you can dry small poppies and they seem to work well. Whereas for wreaths I like to use things like eucalyptus and olive, and I’ve started trying hydrangeas and peonies.”

While some flowers she dries herself, others she buys dried. She also forages for seed pods at the end of the season and picks them when they are dry already. “In terms of colors, it’s mostly pastel shades although currently I’m working on a red, white and blue floral hoop and enjoying how these bright colors work together!” she says.

The post The Botanical Embroidery of Olga Prinku appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her Iranian heritage also plays a central within her work. Identifying as a member of the Baha’i Faith – an oppressed minority in Iran – she explores themes including the oppression of women and minority faiths. Her artistic goal? To make art that is at once thought-provoking and joyful.

Having earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010, her work includes anything from watercolor gouache paintings and collages to knitting sweaters. “I’m a very whatever I feel inspired to do is what I will do kind of a creative person,” she told Matter of Hand. “I love knitting and painting, but I go through phases with both of them. I will really focus on painting for four or five months and then, often in the fall, I’ll start to feel like I want to knit a sweater.”

Much like her work, Karamallis’ creative process varies from piece to piece. “Typically in the front end of the process I do the research and take notes, then I come to a decision more or less about what I want the content of the painting to be,” she explains. After her visual research, she sits down and paints. “I try to come up with a color story that feels cohesive,” she says. “Oftentimes if I decide on a color that I want to have some kind of movement throughout the piece, I will lay it down in a couple places instead of finishing one area first. I try to look at the whole thing throughout the process. I think that a lot of painters do that to create a larger, cohesive composition. “

Her inspiration includes artists like Matisse, Willem de Kooning, and Gauguin, but also Persian miniature painting, and Persian rugs and gardens. “One of the biggest goals in a Persian garden is to create protected relaxation outdoors with the same level of privacy that you would feel in your own home,” she notes. “That is something that is really interesting to me.”

Enter her painted gardens:

The post The Vibrant Painted Gardens of Alexandra Karamallis appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Summer is a model, Youtuber, and environmentalist with a life-long love of plants, especially potted plants. Her goal in life is to celebrate nature and introduce it to our modern, urban lifestyle.

Summer (yes, that is the name her parents gave her) has always loved nature, and she even studied biology and botany in university. She wanted to continue her education and become a scientist, but she soon realized her real goal in life was to educate the general public. She’s been working with scientists, nursery owners, and activists to help spread the gospel of the urban jungle.

And the most insane detail is her own plants– Summer has over 1,000 of them in her small Brooklyn apartment! Talk about an urban jungle!

The post Activist Takes Her Love of Plants to a Whole New Level appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Katie is a professional florist Based in Salem, Oregon. She’s also the owner and founder of Ponderosa and Thyme, an award-winning flower arrangement studio.

Katie’s flower arrangements are special for several reasons. First, her designs are beautiful – they almost seem like statues. But it’s not just the way she arranges flowers and plants, it’s also where she gets them. Katie uses locally-grown flowers and works with Oregon-based farmers to create arrangements that represent Oregon. The arrangements change from season to season, as the seasonal flowers change, so now wreath or bouquet is like any other.

This can be a challenge, of course, as Katie is limited to whatever is available in her home state, but it is also an opportunity to create a community of farmers, florists and flower enthusiasts, who all share a deep love for nature. We can’t all visit Ponderosa and Thyme, unfortunately, but Katie’s IG account does provide us a pick to her wonderful world of plants and flowers. Take a look and maybe you’ll be inspired to create your own bouquet.  

The post This Bouquets Will Make You Want to Pick Flowers In the Nearest Meadow appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“A damaged butterfly, a broken twig, a bumblebee, some strangely grown weeds: I find all these unique discoveries in my path and then take them home to my studio,” she writes on her website. “Here, I take my time to explore the objects and try to work out how I can show each one to its best advantage.”

She collects her material from a variety of sources: the flowers she grows in her garden, second-hand picture books, and butterflies from the botanical garden in Utrecht. It’s these finds which inspire her work, allowing her to invent her own stories about their former existence. By protecting these pieces under glass, she gives the objects a second life, hoping to inspire people to make up their own stories about them.

“I hope it gives joy and that it inspires,” she said in an interview with Create Magazine. With more than 25k fans on Instagram, it’s clear that people are inspired.

The post Dutch Artist Brings Her Garden Inside appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Working primarily with paper (mainly fine crepe paper), she does copious amounts of research on her subjects both before and during the making process. Her research includes studying live plants and flowers, but also online image searches and combing through books and magazines.

“I’ve always loved paper,” she admitted in an interview with Ballpitmag, stating that the obsession likely started with Lisa Frank stationery when she was very young. “My current use of fine crepe paper is yet another iteration of my love for paper,” she admits. “I love the tactile feel of good paper. The smell of old paper. The myriad forms paper can take. I also love that paper often seems ephemeral and delicate, but under the right circumstances, it can last lifetimes.”

Based in Boulder, Colorado, where she shares a home with her husband, two kids, and their dog, Redlinger is very much inspired by her natural surroundings. “There’s a lot of open space around my home in Colorado, and I love watching the colors of the landscape change throughout the seasons,” she says. “I visit plant nurseries a lot, and botanical gardens when I can, to see what’s blooming. And I’ve recently become enamored with the floral paintings of Odilon Redon.”

Take a look at some of her incredible creations:

The post Stephanie Redlinger Makes Whole Gardens Out of Paper appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Valesca van Waveren 

Based in Amsterdam, illustrator and ceramist Valesca van Waveren treats her house plants with kindness. They serve as sources of inspiration for her cheerful illustrations, through which she explores the many ways humans and nature interact with each other. “Without plants, we would be nowhere,” she relayed in an interview with Flow. “They purify the air that we breathe, and much of our food comes from their fruit, seeds, leaves, and roots. By taking good care of plants, we are also taking good care of the world and ourselves.”

Chloe Joyce

There are two main subjects that Chloe Joyce’s illustrations seem to wholly focus on: women and house plants. Situated in their home environments, her characters seem laid back, if a bit pensive. Based in Sydney, Joyce admits she’s most inspired when traveling. “Being around new cultures and landscapes is incredibly invigorating and can really shake up how you view your work,” she reflected in an interview with Twenty Something Humans.

Amy Lincoln

New York-based artist Amy Lincoln makes acrylic paintings that are wholly engulfed by plants. Though first attracted to portraits, as time passed she found herself more and more drawn to plants. “When I was in grad school I started keeping potted plants, and they occasionally made their way into my paintings,” she recalled in an interview with Maake Magazine. “In about 2009 I got more interested in painting plants and since about 2012 plants and landscape are pretty much the only thing I paint.”

The post These Artists are Clearly Inspired by Their House Plants appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“Our poser blooms allow you a stress-free completion date, with no unexpected surprises on your wedding day morning, since these pretties can be made well ahead of event time and easily stored in boxes,” she explains on her website. According to Kinney, her bouquets can easily be packed in suitcases, since many destination locations do not have a wide variety of selection to choose from on floral needs.

Her fake flowers are also lighter in weight and don’t easily stain fabrics in comparison to fresh flowers, with the added bonus that they are also allergy-friendly since they are unscented and pollen-free. “Some other reasons we are supporters of these fakers are the fact that they are more durable compared to fresh flowers, allowing your petals to stay pretty and perky in all climates and locations,” she notes.

Kinney’s original idea to start a faux flower business actually originated from her own wedding. “When I was planning my own wedding, I met with numerous fresh florists, but quickly learned my floral-vision was quite expensive,” she recalled. “My mom suggested that we explore faux blooms as an alternative so that I wouldn’t have to compromise my dream look. I’ll admit I was very hesitant to this idea. But I am so glad she did make that suggestion, because I instantly fell in love with the possibilities of the incredible selection out there!”

According to Kinney, family and friends at her wedding had zero idea poser-blooms were surrounding them when she said her vows. And so, after her wedding, she decided to start a website and design for other people’s weddings on a hobby-scale. This little faux floral business surprisingly blossomed pretty quickly. Judging by her Incredible variety, we can see why!

The post These Flower Arrangments Are Meant to Last appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Nowadays, with little over 50k followers on Instagram and clients that include Anthropologie, Hallmark, and the Land of Nod, her work is featured on a huge variety of products: from women’s and children’s wear to paper products, home furnishings, and giftware.

When it comes to her creative process, Johnson admits she relies on a heavy dose of intuition and spontaneity. “I like to explore a lot, try new materials, play with layers and texture, then let the outcome determine the finished piece,” she relayed. “I also like spontaneity. I’m not much of a planner.”

She adds that she never draws an outline or sketch beforehand – a remarkable statement if you take into account the amount of work she’s produced. “If something is going pear-shaped I like to push through and make it work and I think that by doing that I get interesting and unexpected results,” she notes. “But I’m also very organized and logical. I enjoy creating groups of related pieces – collections. Cohesiveness, harmonious color, a common thread that links all my work – these are all important to me.”

With creativity clearly running through her veins, Johnson says she doesn’t deal with artist block. “There are always too many ideas and not enough time,” she says. You’d want to follow her on Instagram.

The post Victoria Johnson Has Creativity Running Through Her Veins appeared first on PlayJunkie.

According to Phoenix, a central theme to her work and a huge inspiration is color. “Color, color, color!” she exclaimed once in an interview with Papirmass. “My work emerged from a desire to produce art as bright and as vibrant as I wanted. I love my day job, but sometimes I’m told to change my colors so they ‘don’t vibrate so much.’ I WANT my art to vibrate!”

According to Phoenix, exploring color in her pieces has always been her favorite part. Flowers come second. “I choose to paint flowers simply because they are an excellent vehicle for exploring color,” she admits. Most of the flowers and leaves are imagined, and act as a vehicle for her to create vibrant color relationships.

The finished result – lush and vibrant – has been featured on stationery, book covers, and embroidery, amongst other products, grabbing the attention of almost 40k followers on Instagram. She also sells her artwork as embellished art prints, using gold and neon paint to make each print rich and unique.  

“True creativity is like an itch that you LOVE to scratch using your curiosity,” says Phoenix. “You can just keep scratching it; it never gets old! That’s how color is for me. I’m curious about color, which makes me want to explore it and ‘get creative’ with it. Everyone has something they’re curious about, so I think everyone has that innate potential to explore that curiosity and in turn, be creative.”

The post Jess Phoenix’s Illustrations Are the Very Meaning of Flower Power appeared first on PlayJunkie.

According to her bio, her journey started with learning how to crochet and knit. Gradually, and after being exposed to botanical art, she started experimenting with dried flowers. She then came to develop a floral embroidery technique using real organic material as her thread – a skill she now passes onto others through classes and tutorials

“A lot of my ideas come from going for walks in the countryside near where I live, or things I grow in the garden,” she told The Italian Rêve. The garden is also where Prinku finds a lot of her materials. “I love working with the seasons,” she notes, “so whatever is in season is my favorite at that moment! Some flowers are better than others for particular purposes. For example, for floral embroidery hoops you want flowers with thin stalks and without particularly big heads. I’ve recently discovered you can dry small poppies and they seem to work well. Whereas for wreaths I like to use things like eucalyptus and olive, and I’ve started trying hydrangeas and peonies.”

While some flowers she dries herself, others she buys dried. She also forages for seed pods at the end of the season and picks them when they are dry already. “In terms of colors, it’s mostly pastel shades although currently I’m working on a red, white and blue floral hoop and enjoying how these bright colors work together!” she says.

The post The Botanical Embroidery of Olga Prinku appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Her Iranian heritage also plays a central within her work. Identifying as a member of the Baha’i Faith – an oppressed minority in Iran – she explores themes including the oppression of women and minority faiths. Her artistic goal? To make art that is at once thought-provoking and joyful.

Having earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2010, her work includes anything from watercolor gouache paintings and collages to knitting sweaters. “I’m a very whatever I feel inspired to do is what I will do kind of a creative person,” she told Matter of Hand. “I love knitting and painting, but I go through phases with both of them. I will really focus on painting for four or five months and then, often in the fall, I’ll start to feel like I want to knit a sweater.”

Much like her work, Karamallis’ creative process varies from piece to piece. “Typically in the front end of the process I do the research and take notes, then I come to a decision more or less about what I want the content of the painting to be,” she explains. After her visual research, she sits down and paints. “I try to come up with a color story that feels cohesive,” she says. “Oftentimes if I decide on a color that I want to have some kind of movement throughout the piece, I will lay it down in a couple places instead of finishing one area first. I try to look at the whole thing throughout the process. I think that a lot of painters do that to create a larger, cohesive composition. “

Her inspiration includes artists like Matisse, Willem de Kooning, and Gauguin, but also Persian miniature painting, and Persian rugs and gardens. “One of the biggest goals in a Persian garden is to create protected relaxation outdoors with the same level of privacy that you would feel in your own home,” she notes. “That is something that is really interesting to me.”

Enter her painted gardens:

The post The Vibrant Painted Gardens of Alexandra Karamallis appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Summer is a model, Youtuber, and environmentalist with a life-long love of plants, especially potted plants. Her goal in life is to celebrate nature and introduce it to our modern, urban lifestyle.

Summer (yes, that is the name her parents gave her) has always loved nature, and she even studied biology and botany in university. She wanted to continue her education and become a scientist, but she soon realized her real goal in life was to educate the general public. She’s been working with scientists, nursery owners, and activists to help spread the gospel of the urban jungle.

And the most insane detail is her own plants– Summer has over 1,000 of them in her small Brooklyn apartment! Talk about an urban jungle!

The post Activist Takes Her Love of Plants to a Whole New Level appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Katie is a professional florist Based in Salem, Oregon. She’s also the owner and founder of Ponderosa and Thyme, an award-winning flower arrangement studio.

Katie’s flower arrangements are special for several reasons. First, her designs are beautiful – they almost seem like statues. But it’s not just the way she arranges flowers and plants, it’s also where she gets them. Katie uses locally-grown flowers and works with Oregon-based farmers to create arrangements that represent Oregon. The arrangements change from season to season, as the seasonal flowers change, so now wreath or bouquet is like any other.

This can be a challenge, of course, as Katie is limited to whatever is available in her home state, but it is also an opportunity to create a community of farmers, florists and flower enthusiasts, who all share a deep love for nature. We can’t all visit Ponderosa and Thyme, unfortunately, but Katie’s IG account does provide us a pick to her wonderful world of plants and flowers. Take a look and maybe you’ll be inspired to create your own bouquet.  

The post This Bouquets Will Make You Want to Pick Flowers In the Nearest Meadow appeared first on PlayJunkie.

“A damaged butterfly, a broken twig, a bumblebee, some strangely grown weeds: I find all these unique discoveries in my path and then take them home to my studio,” she writes on her website. “Here, I take my time to explore the objects and try to work out how I can show each one to its best advantage.”

She collects her material from a variety of sources: the flowers she grows in her garden, second-hand picture books, and butterflies from the botanical garden in Utrecht. It’s these finds which inspire her work, allowing her to invent her own stories about their former existence. By protecting these pieces under glass, she gives the objects a second life, hoping to inspire people to make up their own stories about them.

“I hope it gives joy and that it inspires,” she said in an interview with Create Magazine. With more than 25k fans on Instagram, it’s clear that people are inspired.

The post Dutch Artist Brings Her Garden Inside appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Working primarily with paper (mainly fine crepe paper), she does copious amounts of research on her subjects both before and during the making process. Her research includes studying live plants and flowers, but also online image searches and combing through books and magazines.

“I’ve always loved paper,” she admitted in an interview with Ballpitmag, stating that the obsession likely started with Lisa Frank stationery when she was very young. “My current use of fine crepe paper is yet another iteration of my love for paper,” she admits. “I love the tactile feel of good paper. The smell of old paper. The myriad forms paper can take. I also love that paper often seems ephemeral and delicate, but under the right circumstances, it can last lifetimes.”

Based in Boulder, Colorado, where she shares a home with her husband, two kids, and their dog, Redlinger is very much inspired by her natural surroundings. “There’s a lot of open space around my home in Colorado, and I love watching the colors of the landscape change throughout the seasons,” she says. “I visit plant nurseries a lot, and botanical gardens when I can, to see what’s blooming. And I’ve recently become enamored with the floral paintings of Odilon Redon.”

Take a look at some of her incredible creations:

The post Stephanie Redlinger Makes Whole Gardens Out of Paper appeared first on PlayJunkie.

Valesca van Waveren 

Based in Amsterdam, illustrator and ceramist Valesca van Waveren treats her house plants with kindness. They serve as sources of inspiration for her cheerful illustrations, through which she explores the many ways humans and nature interact with each other. “Without plants, we would be nowhere,” she relayed in an interview with Flow. “They purify the air that we breathe, and much of our food comes from their fruit, seeds, leaves, and roots. By taking good care of plants, we are also taking good care of the world and ourselves.”

Chloe Joyce

There are two main subjects that Chloe Joyce’s illustrations seem to wholly focus on: women and house plants. Situated in their home environments, her characters seem laid back, if a bit pensive. Based in Sydney, Joyce admits she’s most inspired when traveling. “Being around new cultures and landscapes is incredibly invigorating and can really shake up how you view your work,” she reflected in an interview with Twenty Something Humans.

Amy Lincoln

New York-based artist Amy Lincoln makes acrylic paintings that are wholly engulfed by plants. Though first attracted to portraits, as time passed she found herself more and more drawn to plants. “When I was in grad school I started keeping potted plants, and they occasionally made their way into my paintings,” she recalled in an interview with Maake Magazine. “In about 2009 I got more interested in painting plants and since about 2012 plants and landscape are pretty much the only thing I paint.”

The post These Artists are Clearly Inspired by Their House Plants appeared first on PlayJunkie.