About
Everbloom is the studio of Julia Whicker, who builds botanicals from paper, petal by petal, and makes them to last.
Meet Julia
I made my first paper flowers in August 2023, for my tenth wedding anniversary party. I wanted centerpieces our guests could take home and keep. I taught myself from books and videos, then began inventing my own methods, because the published ones never came close to the lifelike quality I was after.
I came to this from fiction. I earned my MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and my first novel, Wonderblood, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2018. I brought a writer’s habits to the studio: practice, fail, refine. I knew I would make hundreds of bad flowers before I made a good one. Along the way I learned that a flower’s beauty isn’t only in its colors and petals. It’s in the way it holds itself: its curve, its balance, its gesture.
The Work
Every petal is cut from German or Italian crepe paper and dyed by hand, then worked with wet and powdered pigments, wired, shaped, and sealed. For example, a single large dahlia takes more than a hundred of them. Some stems take about two hours; others take twelve or more. Branches, berries, moss, and vining vegetables each ask for techniques of their own.
Some pieces follow nature closely. Others take liberties nature never did: a jeweled center, petals finished in gold leaf. And some, the Signature Series, are flowers of my own invention.
Why I Make Them
When I gave a bouquet to a friend on her wedding day, she opened the box and broke down crying. So did I. It was a small moment, but it’s why I do this: to make flowers with enough care to survive the occasion they celebrate, still beautiful years later, when the day is a memory and the story behind it has become part of a life.
My work has gone to weddings, private commissions, and boutiques. Every piece is made by hand in my studio in State College, Pennsylvania, most of them to order: for a particular room, a particular day, or a particular person.