Olha
The first commission I ever took on
A friend wanted a bridal bouquet that would never wilt. I said yes before I knew if I could actually do it.
I'd been modelling flowers as a hobby for a year when a friend asked if I could make her something for her wedding. She wanted to carry her grandmother's flowers, and her grandmother's flowers had been pressed inside a book for twenty years.
She sent me a photo of those pressed flowers, colourless, almost transparent. I said yes before I'd stopped to think whether I actually knew how.
It took me three weeks. I remade the bouquet four times because I couldn't get the tone right: a pressed flower doesn't keep the colour it once had, it keeps whatever colour is left, and I had to decide which of the two to recreate. In the end, I chose the one it should have had.
I gave it to her two days before the wedding, and she burst into tears, which is what happens when you hand someone back something they'd already given up for lost.
That was the moment I stopped thinking of this as a hobby. Not because of the money, I didn't charge for it, but because I finally understood what it was for.
