Prior to the launching of Bold Blossoms, our CEO made sure to have her hand in many major floral projects in and around Orange County/Los Angeles area, one of those being the Rose Parade. This most recent parade (2 days ago) was her 10th year doing Rose Parade floats. Despite being fully emerged in monthly flower subscription boxes for December, that didn’t stand in her way of putting floats together. It is just one of those projects she can’t get away from. We are excited today to give you that inside scoop on what it takes and the crazy of it all!
From our CEO:
Working for Fiesta Parade Floats the last month of the year (December) for the past 10 years, has been a highlight. Talk about surrounding yourself with thousands of flowers…that is not an exaggeration…it truly is thousands upon thousands of flowers.
The float making process is one many believe to be done in one month but the true time and length of putting a float together is an entire year. The planning, building, and creation of the base structure alone takes months. The structures consist of metal, screening, foaming, painting and more. From here all the structures are covered with natural materials. The entire top surface of the float is required to be covered by dried and/or fresh natural materials. The middle ground of the float process are items using these so-called dried natural materials. The pictures shown below are exactly that. All done with dried materials.
Photo 1 (above): is one of the drums on the Donate Life float. The beans in rows create a unified look making this creation just amazing!
Photo 2 (middle above): the flower on the UPS Store float is made of chopped up straw-flower (yellow) and coconut (white).
Photo3 (above): This lion fish on the Dole Packaged Foods float is a unique fish made of a variety of beans, marigold, thistle seed, straw-flower and more.
Many of the items like the above are done prior to what we call “Deck week”. The final week is left to fresh flowers and last minutes projects on the float.
The process that is done in the last week prior to the New Year is the fresh flowers. It all starts on the 26th and concludes on the 31st at judging time. We are pretty much working non-stop over the period of the 26th-31st of December, and even pulling a 24-hour shift on the 30th into the 31st.
These are just a few photos from the 13 floats that Fiesta Parade Floats puts together.
Once the floats are put together it goes into a judging process and floats receive awards for various reasons. Nine of our thirteen floats received awards for outstanding floral presentation!
Now we move back into our monthly flower subscriptions at Bold Blossoms. Right around the corner in February we have a double-shipment month, as we send our Valentine’s Day bouquet deliveries followed immediately by our monthly Bold Blossoms bouquet shipments! A busy time of the year!