>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by... Albertsons Companies... with additional support from the following companies... CalFlowers... Design Master Color Tool... Smithers-Oasis... Sunshine Bouquet.

♪ >> Today on "Life in Bloom," I'm exploring the fascinating world of color.

We'll discuss how color relates to personality traits and how that can influence the bouquets you create or receive.

We'll learn the health benefits associated with yellow flowers and explore color theory with fun arrangements.

♪ ♪ I'm J Schwanke.

Welcome to "Life in Bloom."

"Nowhere in nature can you find purer color than sunlight passing through the petal of a flower."

We all have tried-and-true colors -- the ones that speak to us most deeply and those that we love to surround ourselves with.

♪ Our color choices can actually reveal a lot about our personality.

When it comes to flowers, the color choices are endless.

♪ Flowers are a great way to experiment with color, to step outside your comfort zone, to add a splash of color to our living spaces.

They're a great way to try on a color in your life.

♪ Today on "Life in Bloom," we'll take you on a colorful journey that is sure to inspire you to introduce a little more color into your life.

♪ As a culture, we've assigned meaning to many kinds of flowers.

The same applies to color.

If you are drawn to particular colors, the current thought is that it tells us a bit about your personality.

What does your favorite color say about you?

Here is a few traits assigned to each color.

Do they ring true for you?

♪ Yellow: cheerful, fun, an idea person, a perfectionist.

♪ Orange: accepting, friendly, warm, and tolerant.

♪ Red: extroverted, confident, courageous, and optimistic.

♪ Pink: kind, loving, and sensitive to the needs of others.

♪ Purple: emotional, free spirit, gentle, and romantic.

♪ Blue: conservative, reliable, peaceful, and trustworthy.

♪ Green: compassionate, generous, loving, and kind.

♪ If you find this topic interesting, there are many books on color theory and personality.

It's fascinating.

♪ Today, we'll demonstrate a simple but powerful way that color can affect the look and feel of your arrangements.

Our container choice is an easy way for us to demonstrate color.

Choosing this red vase means that the powerful color in this arrangement will be red before I add any flowers.

I like to start a vase arrangement with a structure of foliage to hold and support the flowers.

Ninebark and safari sunset Leucadendron have a reddish cast in their leaves.

♪ I'm creating a monochromatic arrangement.

We're using red as the palette, so we'll have tints, tones, and shades of red in this arrangement.

Pink, maroon, and burgundy flowers represent the tints, tones, and shades of the base color, red.

It ties in nicely with the container, and we know that a monochromatic color scheme is calming.

♪ Now we have a beautiful arrangement that's monochromatic in our red tones.

But remember, there's six colors in the color wheel.

There's a cool side and a warm side.

Red and yellow and orange are our warm colors, but let's take a look at the cool side.

On the cool side of the color wheel, we have blue and green and purple, and so a monochromatic arrangement can still happen in those colorations.

With our lavender roses, purple larkspur, purple glads, and an amethyst container, we still have the calming effect of having a monochromatic arrangement.

But what if we wanted our color spectrum to be friendly?

Let's take a look at analogous colors -- colors that are next to one another on the color wheel.

One of my favorite analogous color combinations is yellow and green -- again, two colors that are next to one another.

Using those colors together gives our arrangement a friendly appearance.

The Craspedia and the yellow lilies, along with our variegated aspidistra, those colors combine together to make a welcoming-type effect with the arrangement.

Calming and welcoming are friendly.

But what if we wanted to get people excited?

Let's talk about the colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel.

Complementary colors always cause excitement: red and green, yellow and purple; or orange and blue.

With our protea, lilies, roses, and hydrangea, we have complementary colors that are opposite one another, and when we see those opposite colors, they cause excitement.

It's a powerful way for us to use color to translate emotion to our flower arranging.

♪ Color is not only eye-catching in flowers, but it's also a good reminder about eating for better health.

♪ Eating a range of colors in vegetables and fruits is an easy-to-remember strategy for getting your variety of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients, all of which help you stay healthy and allow your body to thrive.

Color offers us different ways to express ourselves, even in the kitchen.

Today we'll dress up our hummus several different ways to give us colorful choices.

♪ Blue and purple vegetables and fruit contain phytonutrients, including resveratrol and anthocyanins, studied for anti-aging properties.

♪ Orange and yellow veggies and fruits, rich in vitamin C and carotenoids, like beta-carotene, improve immune function and promote eye health, among other benefits.

♪ Green veggies and fruits are rich in lutein and vitamin K, which is essential for blood and bone health.

Cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli, have been shown to enhance immune function.

♪ Red vegetables and fruit contain lycopene and ellagic acid, both of which have been studied for their cancer-fighting effects.

♪ Even white and brown produce, such as garlic and cauliflower, though less colorful, are still a healthy choice, with cancer-fighting compounds.

For inspiration, try creating a meal using every color.

♪ Today, I'll be making rainbow shots.

The combination of ingredients creates a seemingly magical display of color.

♪ Well, that's not too shabby for my second time.

♪ One of the things that we know, from studies done at major universities, is that people who receive flowers when they're sick get better faster, and people who receive yellow flowers get better faster still.

So I thought it was a good opportunity for us to create a monochromatic arrangement to show you an arrangement created of tints, tones, and shades of yellow in a yellow vase, with yellow ribbon.

I've selected this vase.

The great part about this vase, it has a great quantity of water at the bottom and a narrow neck.

That's going to allow me to put ribbon around the outside, and it's also going to hold my flowers together, much like I would in my hand when I'm creating a hand bouquet.

So I have a tight, cinched-up area.

The stems can splay out at the bottom, and they can splay out the top.

It makes it easy to design when you're using a narrow-necked vase.

We'll start with our calla lilies.

Now, one of the things that I love to do is group the flowers together, because I feel the impact is so much stronger when the flowers come together in one spot.

So we're going to take our calla lilies, we're going to cut them all off at once, and we're going to stick them into the vase, all coming out one side.

Again, with our spray roses, we'll take our knife and cut those stems.

They're going to go in in another group.

We've also got alstroemeria.

Some people call this the restaurant flower.

I like that because you see them so frequently in restaurants.

The reason restaurants like alstroemeria is because they last so long.

Each one of the blossoms opens up.

They're also known as the Peruvian lily.

Take those stems and cut those and place them coming out the other side.

So now we have three groups of flowers that are coming out of the vase itself.

Then, we can go ahead and add our other flowers -- interesting flowers like pincushion protea... ...or these great shampoo ginger.

And the reason they're called shampoo ginger is because when you crack them ever so slightly, the interior smells like shampoo.

♪ You'll notice that I'm adding those now, too, while there's still plenty of room.

That's a nice big, fat stem, and I have skinnier stems that can go around the outside.

♪ I like adding the Craspedia yarrow last.

It's called globe yarrow.

And it's like little balls that are dancing above the rest of the flowers.

It's part of the fun of this arrangement.

The great part about the globe yarrow, too, is that it'll dry.

Now we're ready for a ribbon treatment, and this is simple.

We'll use 2 yards of ribbon.

I like the yellow gingham.

♪ We'll cut it at a dovetail.

♪ And we'll tie it around the vase.

Going to do a single shoelace, which means that I make the one side of the shoelace, and instead of pulling it in and making the other side, I pull that all the way through, so then I've got a great little tail and I've also got a great bow on one side.

Then, I'll use a second color.

I like this big solid yellow next to the gingham because they look great, and it's a sheer.

I always use a couple different kinds of ribbon on a vase because I think it makes it look more exciting.

♪ We'll bring it around, and in this case, then we'll do a regular shoelace, so I'll bring it in, tie it over the same knot, and then make two loops.

♪ Our streamers are the same length, and we have a great bow loop on either side.

Who couldn't feel better once this is in the room?

And since research tells us that yellow has that effect, it's a great way to make a monochromatic arrangement that'll help someone feel better faster.

♪ The rainbow rose was first created by Peter van de Werken.

The hybrid tea rose Vendela is most often used, as this variety absorbs the dyes perfectly.

Multiple dyes are used in combination to produce the rainbow effect.

There are variations of colors, including tropical and ocean colors.

The same process is used today to create two-color or team-colored roses.

♪ Other cut flowers, such as chrysanthemums and orchids, can also be made rainbow.

♪ The concentration of multiple colors is injected into the rose.

These dyes are systemically taken up inside the rose and dye the petals from the inside.

♪ While vibrant and exciting, rainbow roses have a shorter vase life than normal roses.

♪ We hope you've been inspired to introduce more color into your life with flowers.

For "Life in Bloom," I'm J Schwanke.

See you next time.

♪ [ Ice rattling ] ♪ That's pretty good.

>> It is, yeah.

>> Because, see, you can do this.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, if you want.

Simply come back here and you can say, "Not bad for a second time."

You know, like... >> [ Chuckling ] Right, right.

♪ "J Schwanke's Life In Bloom" is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by... Albertsons Companies... with additional support from the following companies... CalFlowers... Design Master Color Tool... Smithers-Oasis... Sunshine Bouquet.

♪ Closed-caption funding provided by Ocean View Flowers.

♪ For everything flowers, recipes, projects, and more information, visit ubloom.com.

♪