Wild Flowers: Projects and Inspirations

In their colorful volume, event designers Stark and Adler serve up a spirited guide to transforming ordinary flowers into extraordinary decorations. They champion humble blooms like carnations and baby's breath and rhapsodize about the possibilities of flower paintings, flower clouds and flower snowmen (they also show how to make them). They praise vases made out of drinking glasses, too, and proclaim the pleasures of using office supplies such as stickers and labels and colored beverages from the corner store to enhance presentation. Thus, a pint glass stuck with black stickers and topped with a ball of white carnations becomes a striking black and white centerpiece, while a glass vase full of blue Gatorade and stuffed with baby's breath and a bit of maribou boa becomes an ethereal-looking arrangement. The photographs are vivid and the prose is enthusiastic, but the ideas are few and, some might argue, a little bit tacky, making this feel more like a fun vanity project than an authentic how-to. (Apr.)