Super Bowl flower arrangement

The San Francisco 49ers may have lost the Super Bowl last Sunday, but it certainly wasn't for the lack of a good centerpiece. I made a football-inspired arrangement for a party at my friends' house, using a Mitsumata branch to suggest the shape of a goal, and a carnation-studded football propped up on an acrylic rod. I wasn't able to get rust-colored carnations for the ball like I had wanted, so I ended up going with 49ers colors: red, white, and a hint of gold. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I needed to improvise.

The grass was made from a variety of Dianthus barbatus, a cousin of the carnation, and the whole thing looked sort of cute surrounded by everybody's favorite Super Bowl foods. The Mister and I had made a batch of Chili's Southwestern Eggrolls and Iowa Girl Eats' Mini Corn Dog Muffins, there was a three layer dip, and guacamole, and chips, and chili, and... oh, right, a football game on TV.

I thought Beyoncé's fierce halftime show, the excitement of a 34-minute power outage, and the 49ers' thrilling comeback after said power outage made for a really entertaining Super Bowl. And didn't you just love all those animal commercials?

This was my first-ever floral 'sculpture', and while it didn't exactly represent my usual design aesthetic, I was very happy with it. It was a challenge in materials, stability, and balance, and I had such fun making it. It came out looking fairly similar to my early sketch, and with the help of some casting plaster and floral foam, the structure easily survived transportation to my friends' house (I added the football once we were there). Now if only the 49ers had won.