Get inspiration for paper flowers from dahlia grower Jesalyn Pettigrew

The dahlia mania is still going strong here at The Posey Box, and we brought in a real, live dahlia expert to help you make your paper flowers even more lifelike! Last week, we invited Jesalyn Pettigrew to chat with our members about this colorful, amazing flower, and we loved every minute of it.

First of all, a little about Jesalyn. She is a single mom to two young boys, and in 2015 she founded Mossy Gate Flower Farm. She started her garden on just 50 square feet, using it to help with a difficult life transition—I know many of you paper florists came to our craft for similar reasons and understand well the joy that creating can bring. 

Jesalyn’s hobby soon grew into a passion, and even though gardening and farming weren’t in her wheelhouse, she learned the ins and outs of the wholesale cut flower farm industry. She now farms over two acres and is the first flower farm for the Puget Sound Food Hub Coop, is a founding member of Genuine Skagit Valley, and was part of this year’s EatLocalFirst roadside stand feature. Her amazing work has been featured in Hobby Farm magazine, Holly Yee Floral, and Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland.

We were very lucky to have Jesalyn take time out of her busy life to discuss some of the varieties of dahlias that are out there. Local, smaller scale farms like hers often feature an incredible array of varieties, much more than you’ll often find from mass growers. For paper florists, taking a look at some of her blooms means lots of fun with color and form! 

The way that some of those colors bleed into others is beautiful enough to write sonnets about! You can see how some dahlias keep a more flat face, while others curl back into little balls. These flowers really are so versatile! The slides also have some really helpful hints about which papers and sprays to use to achieve the look of those different varieties.

If you are a member of the September Posey Box, you can watch the recording from our meeting by logging into the portal. We talked about her dahlias and what paper, colors, and techniques you can use to recreate them. It’s a great in depth look at ways to keep using your dahlia tutorial this month.  

As always, I would love to see what you create! If you’re like me, you can’t get enough of dahlias and have made lots and lots of them this month. I hope you keep going with this fresh inspiration and make even more realistic and life-like dahlias. Tag us on Instagram @theposeybox.