Paper, glue, wire and paint. These are the simple ingredients I use to make flowers and other botanical specimens. My tools mainly consist of scissors, brushes, a double ball stylus, a ruler, and occasionally one of my stubby nails. I love making flowers for people. Knowing one of my creations sits in a window box in someone’s home or in a cubicle at work makes me happy.

My background is in biology. I wanted to be Jane Goodall and live with the wild chimpanzees in Africa but then I took a botany class and fell in love with plants. Soon I realized I would need a Ph.D. to even think about a career in science, which was overwhelming, especially with two wonderful children to raise. My husband is an architect, an illustrator, and watercolor artist. my daughter graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a B.S. in painting; my son builds large drones and is a painter and musician, and then there’s me, a scientist, and now a botanical artist. A beautiful thing!

Flowers by Plantes was born years ago when I was a stay-at-home mom and needed something creative for myself to do. The crew consisted of me, my husband, and my best friend. We used live flowers and mostly did weddings—all the arrangements, bouquets, floral crowns, etc. Little did I know how intense this business could be—three days and nights before each gig, working at our kitchen table. When we moved to South Carolina, this venture ended and a new adventure for our family began 2,500 miles away.

We are now back where we started in our beautiful, funky little town of Los Osos, California and Flowers by Plantes has been reborn, now in paper form. Let me make something for you—dahlia, sunflower, tulip, hydrangea, floral crown, your favorite flower or plant. It will never die, and you will always have a little piece of my heart.