Taking an unplugged walk throughout nature every now and again can be a refreshing experience. It is truly amazing how many times our eyes can be reopened to the beauty of the natural world. It takes a special set of eyes to see even more beauty in that nature. Certainly, Bridget Beth Collins has it down.
Bridget is the brilliant mind and creative eye behind Flora Forager. The Seattle-based mom of three loves to explore in the woodlands of the Pacific Northwest and the streets of her neighborhood for materials for her work. Using plant pieces and flower petals, she creates dazzling works of botanical art. Bridget makes everything from woodland figures to popular kids' characters out of natural materials.
"Flora Forager is a product of my love affair with glittering nature, and my own artistic skills honed over the years," Bridget explains on her website.
Bridget has a thriving Instagram community that is obsessed with her whimsical creations. She has over 210,000 followers.
There are also Bridget's amazing books, which have added to her popularity. She's created two journals, Metamorphosis: A Flora Forager Journal and Flora Forager: A Seasonal Journal Collected From Nature. Then there's a book of her work titled The Art of Flora Forager. Last but not least is her children's book, Flora Forager ABC.
One day, Bridget Beth Collins looked at an orange poppy and was inspired. It reminded her of orange goldfish, so she turned it into one. She took the petals, arranged them, painted them, and marveled at her work until the pedals shriveled up. She replaced them with artificial ones and hung the picture in her son's bedroom.
In the years since, Bridget has taken her ability to create beautiful arrangements and turned it into an art form. Thus, Flora Forager was born.
"Flora Forager is a product of my love affair with glittering nature, and my own artistic skills honed over the years," Bridget explains in her bio.
Flora Forager has amassed over 220,000 followers on Instagram. Fans can't get enough of the way Bridget reimagines beautiful natural materials into something picturesque.
"I had no plans to start a business or anything like that. I was a stay-at-home mom with three young boys," Bridget told Flower Magazine. "It all happened very organically."
Thankfully, someone who came upon Bridget's work recommended Instagram as the perfect place to showcase her creations. She wasn't sure that what she did qualified as art, but she took a chance.
"I had no idea that petals could be an art form! And, I still wasn’t sure about e-commerce, but my husband is a website developer and said he would design the site and handle the business side, so I could just create," said the Seattle mom.
Bridget's connection to the natural world goes back to her childhood. "We lived next to this big park with a river that led right out to the sea," she recalled. "I was always roaming with my two sisters or by myself. I was all about make-believe and fairy tales. I would write stories; my sister Lucy would type them up; and I would act them out."
Bridget's mother also had a tremendous green thumb. "My mother is a true master gardener," she explained. "She has massive rose gardens with over 70 varieties and thousands of flowers. You could never count them all."
Bridget still takes materials from her mother's garden, but she's also turned to the urban landscape of Seattle for unique finds. "Seattle is called the Emerald City, and it is full of greenery, gardens, and unique flowers," she noted.
She doesn't stick to one kind of creation. Her subjects vary from child characters to animals and "naturescapes."
Bridget knows her boys appreciate her art, but they aren't always interested in getting in on it.
"One of the very first things I did for Flora Forager was a berry rainbow," Bridget recalled to Garden Collage magazine. "We were driving around the neighborhood looking for different colored berries and they found them all. But usually it’s like 'mom and her flowers …' it’s never cool when it’s your own mom. But if we go on a walk through the woods they’ll say do you want this for your art?"
Bridget explained the process behind Flora Forager to Floret Flowers. There, she described how her process has changed as her profile has risen.
"When I go for a walk I can’t help but see the waves of the sea in blue hydrangeas or the tail of a mouse in a fuzzy seed sprig of grass," she noted. "Spontaneous creativity is probably my favorite mode of art, and it certainly created Flora Forager in the beginning. But now that I have commissions and books I’m working on I definitely find materials for pieces I need to create. It becomes a treasure hunt of sorts whenever I go to the nursery."
Making the art is tricky because she's working against the flowers wilting. "Once I have an idea, and the right flowers, it doesn’t take me long to put it together. I generally keep flowers that may wilt in water as I’m working," she explained.
"Sometimes I have to replace flowers with fresher ones as I create. But working with flowers is much quicker than working with paints because you don’t have to mix colors or wait for layers to dry, and you can move the petals around easily if something doesn’t look right. And a lot of the detail in my pieces is simply part of the flowers themselves."
One of the most rewarding parts of the process for Bridget has been seeing how versatile her materials can be. "It was like a secret to unlock," she told My Modern Met.
"Eventually I shared them with others, as a reminder that beauty and magic is hidden in unlikely places, just within our grasp, if we would only seek it out."
You can now bring pieces of Bridget's art into your home. She sells gorgeous prints of select designs on her website. For just $36 apiece, they're a great way to support someone who makes work that's visually stunning and celebrates the world around us.
