Proposal Ideas: Perfecting Rose Bud Ice Cubes
By, Tabitha Miki FDI
Reflections on crafting the perfect floral ice.
Eureka! I finally did it! I’ve been scheming over this project for weeks! The rose bud ice cubes were fabulous! Why am I so excited about flowers frozen in ice? It’s exactly that, beautiful, delicate, gleaming, rose buds frozen in clear ice! That, and well, it was a process! I thought that I could freeze the rose buds and fill the clear ice bucket with them to add that certain, “Je ne sais quoi” (translation: indefinable quality that makes something distinctive or attractive), to our luxurious Pink Rose Package for our romantic, surprise proposals, but creating them was not as simple or as easy as I initially thought it would be. It was actually quite a process, involving a lot of trial and error!
Originally, I thought since rosebud heads are generally small, standard ice trays would be large enough to accommodate them. Wrong! They did not suffice! The rosebuds were not encased in ice, but peeking out of the ice. It was cool, but not quite the look I was going for or what I had envisioned! I decided to splurge and purchase the silicone ice cube molds! I went hunting through stores for 2 inch deep ice cube silicone molds, but no one had them available for in-store pick up, so I relented to waiting and ordered them on Amazon!
Finally, the much anticipated ice cube molds arrived! I couldn’t believe how excited I was to receive them! Then I set out to researching on how to craft these gorgeous ice cubes! I didn’t think this was necessarily a novel idea and that there must be someone giving instructions on this! I scoured the internet and utilized pinterest and google to see what I could find. I found that most of the blogs or craft sites were more focused on the water.
I know… It might seem like a crazy idea at first. After all, if you can think about it, it’s on the internet!
The websites I was reading made it seem, in my opinion, that the water you used was all you really needed to know. I found out that it was not true! First of all as a florist, I know, flowers and petals float!! So, if you want the rose to be able to be encased in the ice, it is actually a multi-step process. I can tell you, it was not as simple as filling the entire ice cube tray with your water and simply dropping the rosebuds in there! Then there was the decision of whether I’d prefer to purify the water myself by boiling it then allowing it to cool and repeating this process and using that water or using distilled water. I decided to use distilled water. (Regardless of whether I had used distilled water or not. Please note: these ice cubes are NOT to be consumed! Please do NOT try to eat them!) The next important step was to wash the rosebuds in the same distilled water and I found using gloves helped! The oils from my hands could still interfere with the water quality! It is also important to not push the rosebuds in the water! The less I fussed with it, the better!
In total, it was about a 17 hour process! I also discovered that it is best to use the ice cubes within 24 hours, because the color of the rose buds fade and do not look fresh! It took a few test runs, but now it has been perfected! So with great pride and without further adieu, Jolene Kaneshige Photography presents it’s clear ice bucket with rosebud ice cubes to chill that bottle of apple cider for the Pink Rose Package, our absolutely divine, luxurious package!
