1. Tell us about yourself! Who is Anna Chedid?

BLACK LIVES MATTER. Today, we wish to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.  To support its community and give voice to their cause. We are actively educating ourselves about Black Lives Matter and how to be better citizens. Here is a list of resources that we are currently reading, listening and/or donating to:

blacklivesmatter.com

www.naacp.com

www.joincampaignzero.org

www.blackvisionsmn.org

In honour of #podcastblackout, we are not publishing our regular podcast this week. Our podcast is a platform of privilege and we have the privilege to decide, on a daily basis,  who's voices to amplify at any given time. This week, it's to the black community. Consider listening to these podcast episodes this week instead:

1619 by New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html

Code Switch by NPR:  www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch

About Race: ...

May 14 is International Paper Flower Day, and in celebration of this special day, we've invited one of our favourite artists, Kate Alarcon of The Cobralily, to talk about it with us. Thanks to Kate - she came up with the idea of designating a specific date to celebrate our paper flower community and our art - paper flowers are spreading like wildfire around the world.

Listen to Quynh and Jessie as they talk to Kate about how she came up with the idea of International Paper Flower Day, the impetus for it, and what she hopes it'll achieve.

GIVEAWAY

Be sure to head over to our IG account and check out our International Paper Flower post for a chance to win a copy of the following books:

Jessie Chui's Paper Flower Art: Create Beautifully Realistic Floral Arrangements

Kate Alarcon's Uncommon Paper Flowers

Lucia Balcazar's Build a Flower: a Beginner's Guide to Paper Flowers 

HOW TO ENTER:

To enter into the...

One of the highlights of Quynh's involvement in Design Days 2020 was having the chance to meet  Holly Heider Chapple! You've likely seen Holly's beautiful work all over social media and she's been featured in numerous wedding magazines and wedding blogs. Her flower arrangements are always exquisitely composed and styled. 

One look at her websites (yes, she's got 3) and you can see it reflects her personality and her style perfectly. She's the founder of Chapel Designers, the owner of Hope Flower Farm, and the artist behind Holly Chapple Flowers. She's a HUGE name in the floral industry, so much so that she's dubbed the "Flower Mama" by her peers. You wouldn't know it because she is so incredibly down-to-earth, warm and engaging. 

With the help of her family, she's turned her floral business into an empire. In this Episode, she is joined by her son, Alex, the Director of Education and Communication, who has become...

Today we talk about our passion project for the last few months - Paper to Profits! 

When we returned from the Masterclass in Monroe, Washington last year, we met so many incredibly talented paper florists who were hungry for more information on how to transform their hobby into a viable business and build it to last. So for a year, we mulled over how to deliver the content we knew so well. As female paper florist entrepreneurs with a wide variety of experiences, we have so much experience and skills to pass on to our students and to mentor them, but how? 

And then the Covid-19 pandemic happened and many people lost their jobs or their positions became precarious. We began to reflect on the priorities of our lives and realized that life is too short to live it working in a job that we had no passion for.

So it became clear to us that this was the perfect time to offer a Program that could help our students become their own...