4 Practically Magic Black Foam Wedding Designs

Excited? On the fence? Thinking you’ve seen this before? I’ve heard these responses and more as Midnight Floral Foam. which turns inky black when wet, goes on sale next week. Will Midnight matter to you? Can you create “black” magic with it? Will your customers like the look? You of course decide for yourself. But if the wedding designs shown here are the evidence, the answers for me are clearly yes, yes and yes. Each of Smithers-Oasis Design Director Frank Feysa’s designs uses exposed dark foam beautifully. I’m looking forward to using it—for the design posibilities and the additional benefits!

What’s less obvious in the photos?

That black foam is more than just elegant appearance. Because with it, you can also save time, choose less expensive containers and use fewer fresh ingredients. How? No fresh ingredients or decorative materials to cover foam. No time spent applying them. Using fewer flowers because you’re not trying to hide foam. Opting for less expensive clear rather than more expensive opaque containers. You can read more about these benefits in the explanation for each arrangement below. And you don’t need black magic to achieve them—just your imagination and skill.

You haven’t seen this before

Midnight is real fresh-flower foam with the same performance as biodegradable Floral Foam MaxLife. Like with Maxlife, it’s easy to insert flowers and the foam grips each stem securely. It holds water. And it biodegrades! When dry, Midnight is charcoal color. As it soaks, it turns an inky black. This makes it easy for customers to see when to add water. Available in 5-inch cubes in addition to regular, grande and designer block sizes, the sculpting possibilities are limitless. So no, you haven’t seen before this combination of performance and design possibilities.

Color rings true against true neutral

[rev_slider alias="black-foam-wedding-1"] Against a stark black backdrop, your designs can have an extra burst of color. All-white designs will shine brighter. Colors will ring truer and more saturated against a true neutral. You might think Frank’s clever design here is loaded up with foliage. Look again. The only foliage used in this design is what you can see. Not a single stem is hidden or foundational. Working with texture-rich botanicals in such a right-now palette, Midnight makes assembly of designs like these simple and quick. As designers, we sometimes pretend as if green is a neutral. Yet we can be quite picky about which greenery we use. I feel wealthy as a designer when I have abundant choices of foliage. Yet that necessary range of greens speaks volumes about the color’s faux-neutrality. Give a true neutral a try and let us know what you think!

Clear glass containers

[rev_slider alias="black-foam-wedding-2"] Every day we send out dozens of low and lush vase arrangements in cubes and cylinder vases. Often we create these designs in green floral foam and wrap the inside of the vase with a broad leaf to hide the foam. Then over the top of we start adding foliage and finally flowers. We might use colored mylar sheets, sheet moss, florists foil or any number of other McGuyver-style methods to hide standard green foam. Using Oasis Midnight? We can eliminate the time hiding the foam plus most of the foliage used and focus in on the placement of the blooms. In the design shown above, Frank was able to create moody and on-trend magic using fewer and finer flowers.

Exposed foam as design

[rev_slider alias="black-foam-wedding-3"] Seeing is believing. This lush design was created atop a plate glass pedestal, like what you’d use to display a cake, with the  Midnight foam fully exposed. That’s right, there’s no vessel at all! After creating the design in a grande brick, it was simply placed atop the pedestal. We all know from doing sympathy designs that inserting stems into foam does displace some water. We also know the dripping subsides quickly. So as Frank did, I invite you to give something new a try. You never know, maybe you didn’t need to buy that expensive vessel after all. Keeping it simple is actually simple now!

The space between flowers is profit

[rev_slider alias="black-foam-wedding-4"] Much as low cube designs can be better in black, many of the wedding and event vessels we often use, such as tapered wood vases, wood rings, cache bowls and logs, also look fantastic designed in black. With Midnight foam, the receding color traits of black help mask any negative space between blooms and foam. Meaning? We need less foliage and flowers to fill that void! Any time our flowers will be viewed in low light, we aim to use Midnight so we can cut back on foliage and spend those dollars on more gorgeous blooms. Remember, the space between your flowers is your profit.

Give it a go yourself

Whatever your personal design aesthetic, be it old-school and traditional, cutting edge and modern or laid-back and bohemian, Oasis Midnight foam has so much to offer and SO much less to hide! Find it in your local wholesalers starting next week. See for yourself how working in black can help your bottom line and increase your creativity! Less truly is more.