here’s one of my 3 sectioned ice vases at a wedding in Alabama. This was a big wedding; one onlooker described it as a 3 Mercedes affair. Meaning, since it’s just a one time event, you might as well drive 3 Mercedes off a cliff; it would cost the same and you’d end up with about the same to show for it 🤣🤣
sectioned ice vase design
This design, for the sectioned ice vase, was based on a client photo that I was sent for a wedding in Alabama. I have no idea who made the original vase. If you’re the one who came up with it and would like to take credit, please comment!
I made three of these sectioned ice vases for the wedding. Fortunately, the florist did a nice job and provided large, elaborate floral arrangements to put on top of each piece. They were ALMOST too much; sometimes big floral displays can overwhelm and hide your ice. The pic is a little misleading, however. In person, the ice really stood out and looked great with the fantastic floral. (Client was super happy too!)
This is one of those designs that I kind of struggle to come up with a good name for. “Sectioned ice vase” is the best that I have so far and it’s 💩 A wedding ice sculpture design name should at least be elegant. Oh well.
this vase is more than a one block ice sculpture
The sectioned ice vase is technically a multi-block ice sculpture, but only barely. It takes about 1 1/2 blocks to make. The top piece is almost a quarter block, as is the stabilizing base piece (not shown in the template).
One of the odd things about this design is that I really don’t like the line art design that much. However, I really like the finished sculpture! That’s normally not the case; I usually can see how a sculpture will look from the line art. Not sure why that is with this one.
this is a tall ice vase and will likely have a large arrangement on top. So overcompensate with the base. It should be wide and thick and the vase needs to be firmly welded to it.
base not shown, but make sure it’s substantial!
adding the floral displays
This florist knocked it out of the park! If I can go back and find who it was, I’ll mention them. I talked with them ahead of time and told them that each vase would have a level, flat top and that we would simply put a piece of cloth between the ice and their flat-bottomed floral displays. The only part that was tricky was that the displays were so big that they were very heavy. The florist handled adding the flowers since I had 3 vases to set up. A lot of the time I end up doing that though since I’m tall.
The flat tops for the vases seemed to be a departure from the original design. It was really hard to tell from the reference photo, but I think the top piece had a space cut into it that the flowers were sitting in. I like flat tops since it makes coordinating with the florist MUCH simpler. And I’ve never had a problem. I’ve added Joe Rimer’s video below that shows how to do it.
I found out just how heavy the floral was at the end of the event. I had to ask for help to get one of the displays down when I was pulling my sculptures. I don’t know that thats ever happened before.
CNC friendly?
I thought about making the sectioned ice vases on my CNC. Especially since I had 3 of them to make. That might have been wise. I’m not sure.
The first vase that I ever tried on my low gantry CNC was the Mother’s Day vase. This wedding was in April (well before Mother’s Day), so had I tried to sculpt it on the CNC, it would have been my first vase on the machine.
In my case, I would have to make the sectioned ice vase in two pieces and freeze the pieces together. There’s not much benefit in freezing the two thinner pieces together. There was no added detail on the inside of these vases. So it actually made a bit of sense to sculpt them by hand. If I had a larger CNC, however, it would have been dumb to sculpt them by hand. I’m pretty sure the reference sculpture was carved at least partly by CNC. No way to know for sure though.
links and stuff
The sectioned ice vase is just one of a number of ice vases on the site. I just recently added a new Mother’s Day ice vase that’s based on my old Ionic column vase design.
Check out the design page for many more ice sculpture designs. Also, check out the design usage guidelines to see what uses are permitted.
You could also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. ice sculpting secrets is also on TikTok (sort of, so far, lol), although videos there aren’t really tied to posts as much. You can comment on IG and fb as well as below. And if it won’t LET you comment below, then definitely comment on fb and/or IG. Thanks!
