Gina Zeck saw a beautifully designed wooden flower bouquet online and decided to try her own hand at it. The response she got from those first flower bouquets she made and has since fueled her hobby into a self-made business still going strong.
They're called wood flowers, and they look like the real thing!
She founded Creative Twists Wood Flowers and now operates her new business out of her home and garage in Berlin, New Jersey. Every square inch of her kitchen and garage have become workspaces, with her and her husband's cars sitting outside on the driveway.
"The most special thing about wooden flowers are that they never die!" Gina laughs while working on her latest bouquet.
The idea is simple. She starts by ordering the sola wood native to marshy lands in Southeast Asia. Once delivered, she sets to hand painting, priming, and designing each pedal and plant into her own arrangements.
Zeck studied make up and has a steady hand for miniature painting. Attributes she says help her in the delicate process.
She hand-glues each stem to the pedals and sticks them into a cut-out green pool noodle in a pot.
Sola wood is one of the lightest woods in the world. It has a cork-like texture and can be gently shaped into the forms like flowers. And they come to her colorless.
From there, her imagination takes over and she sets to work painting and shaping each pedal to resemble the real deal.
"Every piece of my greenery is hand glued, and hand stemmed. It's time consuming but all that little detail is what makes these particular things just so lifelike and realistic.'
There are many benefits to gifting a bouquet of wooden flowers that look like the real deal.
"A huge benefit of them is there's no allergens. So, people in hospitals can enjoy them. Many ICUs don't allow flowers."
And she says they never die. They are a set it and forget it item. There's no care needed.
She likes the stories she hears from her happy recipients. "One of my favorite stories is a woman who her nephew had died, and we created a beautiful arrangement within a metal truck that was her nephew's. So instead of looking at this empty truck that made her sad, now these flowers make her smile."
And memories like those deserve to last a long time.
To find out more about Gina's creations, check her out at https://www.facebook.com/Ctwists/.