Fresh flowers are a wonderful addition to our homes. I wanted to take a moment to talk about how to arrange flowers. Maybe you picked some flowers up at your local store or maybe someone sweetly gives you a dozen roses wrapped in clear cellophane. Either way, you are excited to get them home and into a vase. The only problem is, when you put them in the vase they spread out and look rather sparse and awkward. That wasn’t exactly what you had in mind so you figure you will get a smaller vase. Now you place the flowers in a smaller vase and that isn’t much better. Now they just look cramped. How come vases of flowers from the florists don’t look like this? Well, that is because they have tricks to arrange flowers and for keeping them alive longer. Do you want to know how to do what the pros do?
Great! Because I have a whole lot of flowers sitting in my kitchen just so I can show you. I have a feeling once you realize how easy and economical it is to arrange your own, you will want to have them in the house all the time. Below are the photos I took of the flowers I put together yesterday in my kitchen and my plan is to walk you through how each one is done. I will start small with a simple dozen roses and then move on to the larger arrangements. Trust me you can do this too!
The Flowers…
Are you Ready? Me too! I started at my local grocery store.
Find out what day of the week your store gets in their floral shipment. This is going to give you the freshest and best selection. Also some grocery stores have better selections than others. So if your regular go to grocery store doesn’t have a big selection try another local store.
Now look at all these pretties! That’s my dog Ray (a.k.a. Blinkie) taking the time to smell the roses. Ha Now don’t worry, you won’t ever need this many flowers. Well, not unless you are doing a wedding or writing a blog about crafty crap! And yes I made sure I did this while the hubby was at work so I didn’t have to hear all the side jokes from the peanut gallery about no food in the house and coming home from the grocery store with nothing but flowers and so forth. Timing is everything people!
First up…A Dozen Roses in a Vase
The Basic Process
-Prepare Your Vase
-Hardening Off Stems (Conditioning)
-Arranging the Stems in the Vase
The Supplies I Used
–A Vase I Had at Home
-12 Large Red Roses ( $10, grocery store)
-A Few Leaves of Leatherleaf Fern ($5 for a large bundle,grocery
store)
-1 Packet of Flower Food/Preservative (often included in your flower bundle)
-Sink of Warm Water
-Clear Waterproof Tape ($4, found in the floral section of the craft store)
Prior to picking up your flowers you will want stop at your local craft store and pick up clear waterproof floral tape. This can be found in the floral isle. It is only a few dollars and worth keeping on hand with your extra vases.
Apply your tape across the top of your vase to form a grid. Lastly run a line of tape around the lip of the vase to secure the grid. This is going to help tremendously when you try to arrange your flowers.
You could use a pin frog or marbles but honestly tape is the easiest way to arrange stems in a vase. Now before you get carried away and started cutting and placing your stems in the vase there is one more very important step you need to do. If you want those flowers to last and look good for as long as possible then you will want to condition the stems.
- First, strip off all the leaves of your stems that will be in your vase.
You don’t want any leaves to be submerged in your vase water because it contaminates the water.
- Next, grab that little packet of flower food/preservative that came with your flower bundle and fill your sink part way with warm water.
Add the packet of flower food/preservative to your warm water. You will use this water to cut your stems but first, set aside some of the preservative water for your vase.
- Now you are going to cut at least an inch off the bottom of your stems while holding the stems underwater.
This is going to do two things. It will prevent the stem from taking in air bubbles and the stem will suck up the preservative water and hydrate the flower. The process is called “hardening off”. It is the key to making your flowers last.
After cutting underwater, your flowers are ready to be arranged. I was doing a simple rose arrangement so my next step was to…
- Add leather leaf fern and place the fern pieces around the bottom of my vase.
In arranging flowers, the basic rule of thumb is to start with the greens first. Now the roses. The trick to getting your arrangement to look nice is to have varying heights, high and low.
- Start with your tallest in the middle and build out.
You will notice that the tape grid really helps to keep the stem in just the spot you want it. If you have never used the tape method before I think you will love how much it helps. I can’t wait for you to try it with your own flowers. Here is how my flowers turned out.
ohhhhhhh Don’t these just make you smile!
Next up, I will break down how this candlestick centerpiece is made. So be sure to come back and I will show you how.
(click here for the candlestick centerpiece)
(click here for DIY chalkboard tutorial)
Happy Creating,
next (Bubblegum Bowl centerpiece)
Check out these great sites I will be linking up to….here
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Chloe Crabtree says
Such simple and handy tips! I would love it if you would stop by Celebrate and Decorate and share at our Celebrate Your Story link party! I am pinning this!
Jennifer says
Thank you Chloe
Cassie @ Southeast by Midwest says
I’ve never been much of a flower arranger, I just put them straight into the vase so thanks for the tips! Also, thanks for sharing with Tips & Tricks Link Party 🙂
Jennifer says
Hi Cassie 🙂 I just found this comment in my spam folder so I’m sorry I missed it at first. Thank you for your comment and for hosting the great Link Party.