Event Decorating – How I Can Do That

Fill Up On The Fillings

The holidays are all coming up. And this can bring many feelings to different feelings. When adulting, the hardest part of the holidays are when finances are tight.

To help lighten the mood and bring a little cheer with the gift of flowers.

I’m going to show a simple and easy to make arrangement that you can personalize any way you want because it’s a blank slate. The beauty of it is that I reused some items and others were given to me. I had no out of pocket expenses to share this post with you.

So let’s start with the materials.

Vase

What inspired this post was the vase that my mom had sent me some flowers in.

Fall is my season. I love pumpkin everything. In fact I grow and purchase pumpkins to have all my pumpkin goodness that I can preserve for the rest of the year. And yes, I make pumpkin scones year round because their deliciousness transcends what is in season.

Unfortunately I can’t send you a picture of what the floral arrangement was that my mom sent. Mostly because I want to keep the blank slate in your mind and spark your creativity.

What I like about this white pumpkin is that if you remove all the floral it is literally a cookie jar. So feel free to use this idea any time of year and use cookie jars, old tea pots, water pitchers, even a shoe box (hello baby shower with baby shoe boxes!) Literally, use what you have on hand that brings you inspiration.

If you’re using a cookie jar or anything else with a lid, let me show you the parts of this vase and how it works.

This lid stand/holder is very specific for floral. I’m sure with today’s online offerings, you could find these. But you’re going to have to know what your lid size is and go from there. I have one other cookie jar, but the lid is smaller and this stand/holder definitely will not fit in it.

However I do have two options off the top of my head that I could use from items I have in my house.

I have porcelain dolls from my childhood, and this stand/holder immediately reminded me of the doll stands I have that go around my dolls’ waist. The tension part is too small to fill the lid like in this pumpkin vase, but with two or three I could position them in the smaller lid to make the tension and platform to raise the lid.

Another option is making one from a thick gauge wire. If your local store has a DIY floral department or aisle, you will find wire thick enough to hold its shape and hold the weight of a lid. If you want to price comparison shop, go to an automotive shop or aisle. You’ll often find that you will get a better price in that department, but also walk out with a larger quantity of wire.

Once you have the wire, you can make your own custom holder/stand by leaving several inches of one leg sticking out as you then go in and create a loop of wire inside the lip of your cookie jar lid. I would make a few loops inside that lid to ensure that when you move and manipulate the legs that you don’t shrink your loop and allow your lid to fall. Once you’re confident in you loop, bring out a second leg and then use wire cutters to cut the wire. You can always add more than two legs if you feel like you need to add more stability.

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Inner Stability

For lid placement, you will need something to anchor the stand into.

I’m choosing to reuse the oasis that came with the flowers my mom sent me. This is an amazing product because it not only allows you to place flowers like a pin in a pin cushion. It also allow absorbs and holds water, keeping your flowers in water much longer than free standing in just a vase of water.

If you want to use silk flowers that you have on hand, feel free to use a Styrofoam ball or block. (I don’t recommend styrofoam for fresh flowers because the plastic will kill your flowers and won’t allow them to be properly hydrated.

Once you’ve decided what you’re using as a structure (of if you’re even using a structure), you may find that you need to piece bits together to keep them from falling into your cookie jar and becoming lost. Flower stems are enough to keep bits together. However if you need everything to be in place before you get started on your flowers, know that toothpicks or a couple inches of wire are your best friend.

As you can see here, a single toothpick is all that was needed to hold up a water logged piece of oasis.

This is a beneficial trick if you only have a small sliver of oasis that doesn’t touch the bottom of your vase. Or even if you find that your oasis fell apart on you. Or maybe some oasis you salvaged was a different size than the vase you are working with. You can certainly make your oasis fit the vessel you choose to use.

TIP: Please note that placing a toothpick or wire in a 90° angle is going to cause frustration. The weight of wet oasis and flowers are going to collapse. So instead, angle the toothpick at a 45° angle. That way when gravity starts to work against you, the toothpick will hold its place. This will be further reinforced by the flowers that you soon add.

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Flowers

The Flowers that I was gifted after an event I attended was baby’s breath and eucalyptus. Often we look at these as just fillers to make an arrangement look larger than the more desired stems.

I wanted to use these fillers specifically because they are often overlooked for being used as flowers on their own. Maybe you have a lot of fillers left over from other arrangements that you made. Or maybe your budget is tight and these are the only flowers that are in your price range.

There are so many other fillers that you can find in your grocery store. So please keep your eyes open. And not all stores offer the same offerings. The grocery stores don’t supply very many filling options. However, stores like Trader Joe’s offer the best selection of filler flowers in my area. And their prices are quite affordable.

TIP: If your local store doesn’t offer many choices for filler flowers take a look at what is available for discounted flowers. They’re the ones that have the more delicate flowers that are wilted. These discounted bouquets are often cheaper than just fillers flowers, but the fillers used in these bouquets still have a long life to them. There are a huge number of flowers that will last weeks without even having water available to them. So know that even all that you can afford is a heavily discounted, on its last leg bouquet, if there’s a decent amount of fillers included, you can make a decent arrangement even if you have to throw out the wilted roses, lilies, and other delicate petal flowers.

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Arranging

When looking at using long stems of filler, like eucalyptus, you will be happier in how these stems lie when you hold them up and see which direction they are naturally bending. (See the right picture below.) If you want the stem to cascade down, angle the bend down and also put it in the oasis by entering from the bottom and putting the stem upward. This can be seen in the picture on the left.

See the difference between placing firm eucalyptus stems. Using the left picture (above) the stems you see in the bottom right corner are the stems that I angled from the bottom of the oasis and pushed upward. The one stem that is in the upper left corner is the one that I pushed from the top and downward. But this stem I also used a second trick. Even with the curve of this stem, it had the tendency to stand upright. So I curved the stem in a C shape and kind of hooked the stem in the oasis. Then I put the pumpkin lid over this stem to weigh it down. Even with this trick, the stem never gave a cascading down effect like you see with the bottom right corner stems.

How you place the stems is everything about how it stands up or lays down.

The baby’s breath is much easier to shape the way that you want. For this cookie jar I used about four stems of baby’s breath and snipped them down into smaller branches. And with an arrangement like this, there’s no need for long pieces. All you need are the “scrap” pieces or bits that are the size of your hand or smaller.

If you “scrap” pieces or the bits that you cut down are too small, it just means that you need more of them to fill larger spaces.

One work around for filling empty spaces quicker is to take larger pieces like this. In the below picture on the left is a stem that is about the length of my elbow to my wrist. It could have been trimmed down into four smaller stems, but I wanted to fill a large hole with just this one piece.

To close up the gap spacing between these branches, slide your fingers up the main stem, gathering all the stems up the main stem. That gathering bunches all the stems up to achieve what you see in the right picture. You will have to hold you stem in this position until you push it into the oasis. At that point, the foam holds bunching in place.

Before you place your first gathered stem, I want to draw your attention to a stem feature that has the potential of causing you some up front frustration.

The weakest part of the baby’s breath stem is the joint where all the branches merge. The times that stems snap, when placing them in oasis, is when I try to push these joints in without giving them assistance.

If you have an arrow tip like you see above, it’s easiest if you just snip that off. It causes resistance, when pushed in the oasis, that you don’t need, because those stem numbs have no flowers.

Look further up on the stem and you see what it looks like when you have attached flowering stems. When I don’t need the height from the stem, I snip it right there at the base of where all the stems merge. Then I slide my fingers down to make more of an arrow point instead of a tear drop. That fat end of the tear drop is difficult to push into oasis. However, if you make a sharper point, or a smaller surface area to push in, the stem slides right into the oasis.

If there are any other merges in the stem, it’s easiest if you pinch it smaller to get it to go into the foam. Depending on how large of a cluster you have, there may be a few of these joints that you have to manipulate into the foam.

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Final Adjustments

Once you’ve filled in all your empty space, there’s a few decisions to make.

Do you add more of one filler or the other?
Was there too much and some needs to be removed?
Does placement need to be adjusted?
Is something missing?

I looked at the final arrangement here and went through these same questions. All the holes I filled with baby’s breath as that’s what I chose to be primary flower out of these two fillers.

The thought crossed my mind to add more eucalyptus. But I opted with the creative decision of having less leaves on my pumpkin “vines”. So that meant instead of removing branches of eucalyptus I chose to weave the branches through the clusters of baby’s breath.

As far as “am I missing anything?” that is the question that is always there when you have a blank canvas for an arrangement.

Right now this is how my pumpkin sits in my living room. But it also allows me to keep this long lasting arrangement in season through the rest of the year. For Thanksgiving, I could add fall leaves or any other fall accent pieces. For December all the fall accent pieces can be pulled out of the oasis and winter pieces added. For example, I would put in snowflakes or mini presents. In fact, I’m eye balling some mini glitter snowflakes while writing this. The question is if I want to keep with the white color and add silver glitter snowflakes. Or do I want to add a splash of color and put in gold snowflakes?

But that’s the beauty of making a simple arrangement like this. I can dress it up and change it.

In fact, I could keep this up for the New Year and put in foil clusters that look like fireworks.

For now I’m just going to have to contain myself and not entertain my kids. It’s so easy to grab their small stuffies and other toys and use them as props to make little scenes. We don’t do Elf on the Self in our house, but just like there’s millions of Pinterest posts on Elf on the Shelf ideas, there’s just as many possibilities for arrangements like this. It doesn’t matter if you have a pumpkin cookie jar like vase (like I used here) or a teapot or coffee cup. No matter what you are using as a unique vase, you have just as many options to accessorize and decorate without limits.

How would you dress up a pumpkin arrangement like this?

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Same Flowers Other Styles

When looking at inspiration pictures it’s quite common to hear, “I like those flowers but….” You can be inspired by a pictures, take the flowers and do something else entirely!

The same is true with a style of arrangement and switching out flowers. Or even mix and matching different styles for your event.

For example, if you remember from Making Arrangements last week, here are the pictures from some of the pieces.

This combination would have been a wonderful addition as table swag and centerpiece. This eucalyptus table runner is outside of the garden bouquet style however the greenery is the unifying factor. The focus on roses (as the floral note) also strays, but keeping it simple and with that eucalyptus still evokes the garden feel.

I wanted to bring this idea from the high end weddings (where you see the amazing pictures of 100′ table runners made from roses) to let you know that even if you’re having a garden style wedding you can still borrow from that high end inspiration picture. Make that runner out of greenery or thin willow branches and you can utilize the idea on budget materials.

Tip: If you’re making a runner or wreath like ring for your table centerpiece, make sure you secure your elements with floral wire. Then go back in and fill in around the wire with more pliable greenery, tiny budded floral bunches, or your wedding flowers of choice.

Here’s a close up of the square vase floral arrangement that I paired with the eucalyptus table runner. I want to draw your attention to this because of the red flowers that you see below the rose. This is red yarrow and I wanted to spot light it for a moment. Two posts back, Making Flowers Possible, I mentioned how the sales person had pulled additional flowers for me that had inspired her when she gathered my order. Originally I had ordered a cream like yarrow to help tie in the yellow from the sunflower and yellow roses with red tips. However this red yarrow really made these red tips on the rose just pop. My original pick would have been great. But there’s just something about being in person with flowers one selection just makes more sense when you see them in person.

Tip: If you are going to DIY your own floral arrangements, try to make it in person. And don’t be afraid to stray a little from your inspiration picture. By straying, this is what makes your arrangements reflective of you.

Before I move on to more creative renditions of the same flowers from this style, I want to show you a couple of similar ideas that are closely related.

This one I absolutely love! Still keeping with the country theme, I have the long stem roses, Red Alstomeria, spray roses, Misty Blue Limonium, and Eucalyptus.

If I could do one thing, I would love to move people away from baby’s breath and urge them toward Limonium. It has the baby’s breath look in an arrangement but it gives a few features that are interesting to look at. I love how Limonium has a cascading effect of its blossoms. Think of old fashion candelabra and you’ll get a general idea of what you see when you look closely to these flowers. But even better than it’s structural beauty, these flowers have shades of color that is beautiful and doesn’t come from the flowers sitting in dyed water.

For this bouquet, I opted to dress it up with a deep red vase and ribbon collar. These accessories take the garden bouquet style and dress it up from a garden style to a vineyard style. It’s still on the rustic side, but just dressed up enough.

Tip: Your choice in ribbon or other accessory is going to greatly influence the tone. Remove this vase and ribbon choice and set this arrangement on top of a tall glassware vase with chandelier crystals and you’ve gone straight past garden wedding to Queen’s High Tea.

This next idea may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I wanted to show how changing up the quantity of particular flowers is going to change up the overall esthetic of your flowers. While this arrangement is highlighting the Limonium, I’ve been making similar arrangements from my personal garden. White Yarrow is my most plentiful flower that is growing. Actually Chamomile is giving it a run for its money. But my floral garden is not predominantly show stopping flowers. So if I were to keep a weekly arrangement from just my garden alone, it would look something like this; mostly small buds with accent pieces of larger flowers.

Obviously this isn’t a wedding arrangement by any means. This is a cheer-me-up or maybe a brunch arrangement.

So if you have the idea of keeping your floral budget pared down, bulking up on the smaller blossoms may or may not be what you want to aim for. This looks completely different from a bouquet bulked up with greenery sprinkled with more premium blooms.

If you want to have more of a wow piece on a budget, consider a more minimalistic approach.

Here I have a single Asiatic Lily with a sprig of Eucalyptus in a monogrammed glass tumbler.

Now if you’re looking for a wedding favor that doubles as a table centerpiece, this just might be the idea you’re looking for! Set this tumbler in a circle in the center of a table with a large pillar candle in the center and you have a budget friendly decor that pulls double duty and is absolutely elegant.

This is also a great use of Lily blooms that snap off, because let’s face it. Lilies snap off so easily if you walk too closely past them. Or you’re arranging your bouquet and you hit it funny. I’m aware of how lilies are and I still snapped off nearly a dozen blossoms.

Life happens.

Another simplistic option is this beauty with a floating candle.

To be honest, this 3″ floating candle is over kill for this 4″ wide vase. But this is what I had on hand to get this concept across.

Never be afraid of ever using a single blossom.

The trick is always to make the single flower look interesting to look at. And this is the reason why I played with the lily leaves I had ordered to offer contrast to the plethora of eucalyptus.

This arrangement is easier to see the lily leaves. The garden bouquet comes back again. But notice how when you change the focal flowers that you get a completely different feel. Over half of the bouquet here is Asiatic Lilies. But when you incorporate the blooms in different stages (open, soon to open, and still very green), it creates difference and interest almost like three different flowers even though they’re exactly the same.

Another interesting thing to notice is the floral rule of thumb of keeping flowers in odd numbers. You can’t tell with the lilies, but there is an odd number of stems. What is obvious is the single stem of purple stock. If you were to take a closer look, you will find 3 stem of Dark Blue Delphinium. And topped off with enough of the Misty Blue Limonium to fill the gaps and make this minimalistic bouquet look full.

Even though this picture is beautiful, it does the bouquet no justice. Part of the beauty that is not fully captured is just how amazing the purple complements the orange lilies. If you’ve taken an art class, you’ve heard of a color wheel. And you are familiar with how orange and purple complement each other. When in doubt, definitely use a color wheel to help choose what colors to put together. Even if it’s not a color combination that you are familiar with, these colors and flowers really do go amazing with each other.

And here is a minimalistic version of that bouquet.

This one is my absolutely favorite picture out of them all! And this is just 5 stems of Asiatic Lilies and 3 stems of Dark Blue Delphinium. I’m just going to put a pause right here so I can just stare at this eye candy just a little bit longer.

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Besides just playing with flowers for my personal amusement (and yes, I took great pleasure in making all these), I decided that I was going to make a little something for the men in my life since I’ve been so focused on this job.

The one thing that I learned while making these boutonnieres is that men rarely get flowers from their women. And yet, it’s interesting to watch to see how they respond when you make flowers for them. My boys absolutely went gaga over waking up and finding that I had made flowers for them to wear to church. One, I made something for them and they love it when I make things for them. Two, they got to wear the flowers and it made them feel special, because no one wears flowers to church. And because these boutonnieres had magnets, they were able to move them to keep from their seat belts from crushing them. It was interesting to watch them move their flowers around.

Even my husband enjoyed having flowers to wear. He purposely went out of his way to choose an outfit to go with his flowers.

I also took the opportunity to finish using up my flowers to make these mini bouquets.

If you find that you have flowers left over, I highly recommend making simple bouquets like this and randomly handing them out to people. These flowers were made up so that my boys (while wearing their flowers) could hand them out to whoever they were inspired to hand them out to.

It doesn’t matter what day of the weeks, people go through “stuff”.

I watched from a distance as my boys picked their person.

One was another child. I was amazed because how often do children hand each other flowers. It was a perfect moment to watch.

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Another bouquet of flowers was handed to a mom who had just checked her kids in for the next church service. Who knows how her morning had been going. (Being a mom I can just imagine the craziness we all go through.) But you could just see how her morning had been disrupted in a very pleasant way.

The last bouquet went to another mom. There’s a whole long story to this one, but the quick point is that this bouquet reminded this mom of a story of when her adult son was a little boy.

These stories may or may not mean anything to you personally. But I just want to cause a thinking moment. Here were three acts of kindness that I set my boys up to be a part of. And it was a worthwhile moment. All those were made possible because of a job I did and had left over materials. They weren’t the best of the best flowers. And yet, to these three different people they were the best flowers because they were unexpected.

Speaking of unexpected, I wanted to share this last arrangement that I made. While this is not practical for an event, I wanted to make a couture version of an arrangement.

No one says that your flowers have to look like what you see every day.

Be creative!

Look for ways to be different.

Flowers are an amazing tool.

It doesn’t matter what flowers that you have. You can create a feel with whatever is in your means to use. You can pick out specific flowers. You can select an option that is in your means to recreate something that is outside your means. You can be inspired by ideas completely outside your means and recreate within your means. And you can jump completely outside your box and come up with something new.

The bottom line is that you are not limited by your floral choices at all.

Pick the flowers that make you happy and inspire you. Set yourself up for success by engaging in prepping your flowers before your work day. Be flexible when you start assembling. Plan A may not work, and that’s okay. Move on to a backup plan without causing yourself additional stress. And don’t be afraid to mix up styles. Find a unifying commonality and create the flowers of your dreams!

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Making Arrangements

Talk to a florist and they’ll tell you that you just can’t throw flowers together and expect them to look good. And to the average person, we toss that comment off to the side and say, “just watch me.” And then we wonder why our DIY arrangements look nothing like the inspiration picture that we want to recreate.

Success and being free of frustration comes when we stop trying to clone a picture and just use it truly as just as an inspiration.

Color combination
Style
Form
Specific flowers and greenery

For the wedding that I’m pulling inspiration for these posts, the bride gave me this inspiration picture.

In addition to this picture the bride wanted to incorporate lilies in with the bridal bouquet and the groom’s boutonniere.

What she obviously liked about this picture was the colors and garden style bouquet. So these were the two points that drove the design work for this job.

Every florist has their own touch and esthetic. Because florists are not all the same, that is the permission that you have to stray from your inspiration picture and create with your own floral voice.

If your inspiration picture is a flower you can’t identify, strongly dislike the fragrance of a flower, or can’t source a flower, pick replacements that share the same color, size, or feel. When looking at flowers and one jumps out at you, you absolutely love, and fits in your colors, go with it! Draw inspiration from the flowers even more than you do a picture.

You want to love every flower and greenery that you purchase. When you look at the spread it should already make you smile and excited even when you haven’t done a single thing. This helps you when deciding what flowers you want to place next to each other. You will know when you like a combination. You will also know when you don’t like flowers next to each other. And this is okay. It is part of the creative process!

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In the last post, Making Flowers Possible, we went through the process of cleaning your flowers and preparing them to assemble your bouquets. Having already done this in advance, for your assembly day, you are ready to reach and grab and assemble without fussing over messy stems.

Before we move forward I did want to link a couple videos to show you some techniques that I found were clear and easy to follow; spiral, X base (starting around the 3:30 mark), and building from different holds.

With the flowers that my husband periodically brings home for me, I’ve successfully assembled in a spiral formation and love how sleek, secure, and stem supportive it was.

For the life of me, I could not get these wedding bouquets to work with me in spiral formation. Even with fluffing, adjusting height, and rearranging floral placement…nothing was looking right.

And that is where frustration first sets in!

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You have that image in your head about how these flowers are supposed to go together and look. And when you try all the tricks, it’s easy to think that you’re out of options. Then panic sets in. And all the overwhelmed feelings break like a damn.

That’s why I linked the above videos. There’s at least a half dozen different options available when one fails.

The spiral failed for me in this time crunch, so I modified it with the X formation. But before I went down that option, I pinpointed what was the main cause of my emerging frustration.

I had combination of flowers that I wanted next to each other. The combos were not staying next to each other no matter how I was holding the flowers.

That’s when inspiration hit and I made a trick for myself that I wanted to pass on to you!

For the floral combinations that you have to have next to each other, use your floral tape and tape them together how you want them.

You can also include greenery, or make bunches of greenery with this trick as well.

This is a particularly helpful tool when you also find that you’re struggling with keeping your bouquet symmetrical and balanced.

And if you’re that DIYer that has to have all your floral looking exactly alike, this can help you save time. You can be precise and make it easy to replicate.

Or maybe you’re having an arranging party and everyone is assembling a little too different from each other. You can totally make an assembly line and break down the arrangements into smaller pieces that you can build up as you go.

This bundle and then arrange technique is also great if you like the garden bouquet style but the fly away elements just are not your thing. It can transform a wild garden into a more manicured garden.

In what order do you want to arrange?

I mentioned before that for this wedding order I had 3 bouquets, 3 boutonnieres, 6 oversized vase floating, and 2 flower baskets.

Here’s how I made my choice of order.

Boutonnieres can use scrap pieces. So flowers where the stem snaps, greenery that you trim because it’s too long, flowerets and sprigs that are pared down because they were too full for what you need in other arrangements.

Flower baskets can also use all the flowers that snap off the stems, because you’re just using petals.

My submersible floral arrangement use only specific flowers, so I put those in reserve. And I’ve done those enough I can do them in my sleep. So I put those arrangements off to the side for when I need a break or when I’m frustrated and need a win to get myself back into a good head place.

That leaves the bouquets.

I start with the bridesmaids bouquets because it gives me time to warm up and see how the flowers are going to work with me. Plus there’s the added bonus that they are smaller.

The thing that has to be remembered though is that all the best of the best needs to be set aside for the bride’s bouquet.

As I pull stems, the perfect blossoms I put aside in a vase. The flowers with my favorite colorings, I set them aside as well.

This is especially the case with the roses. But I don’t skimp out on the bridesmaids. I aim for the middle for them. For example, the roses I needed for the bride, the bridesmaids, the boutonnieres, and the flower baskets. My lease favorite roses I left in the container for the baskets. They will be walked on and not photographed closely. The boutonnieres I make from the buds that accidently snap off the stem or left over from the bride’s reserve.

And this is the beauty of ordering extras, or a little more flowers than you need. One, it’s a buffer for damage during transit. But more importantly, it allows you to have a selection and delegate as you need.

I didn’t have mother or grandmother corsages. But how would you put them in the hierarchy of who you are saving for whom. For me, I would put them after the bride, but before the bridesmaids. But maybe you would order them after the bride and bridesmaids. That’s the decision you have to make. And it ensures that you have the quality where your hierarchy lies.

Maybe you’re doing fresh flower aisle runner. Did you want the quality to go there over bouquets, because the guests see those up close?

Again, there’s no wrong answer. You just want your plan ahead of time where the best of the best of your flowers are going to go.

And your order of assembly reflects this.

You may not want to start with your most important piece until after you’ve warmed up and gotten the feel for what you want to create. Your highest carnage of stems is going to happen in the very beginning. And again, when frustration hits. So you want to time your best pieces just right to avoid both of those casualties.

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What to do when the frustration hits

And believe me it will hit, especially if you’re doing this DIY by yourself. It’s okay. This is normal. Nothing is wrong with you. You can do it. And keep telling yourself that this will turn out when all is finished.

Take a coffee break
Grab a snack and walk away for 5 minutes.
Eat that meal that you normally eat an hour or two ago.
Get a breath of fresh air by walking outside to check your mail. And before you open that box, take a look around and see what is going on in nature around you.

I did this job while my husband was at work and I had my kids entertaining themselves in the other room. Thankfully they’re great kids and understand that I need to focus on work. (Of course it helps that they know that they get rewarded with amazing quality time when I complete jobs, they’re so understanding even if they want the cuddles and attention now.

My kids get an honorable mention right now because I’m the type of person that gets in the zone and will neglect my needs to push through and get a job done in a more expedited manner. Mostly, this is to prevent taking advantage of my night owl tendencies. But their schedule can’t be pushed like that.

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My kids were my built in mandatory break times. And that’s a good thing.

Their lunch time came right when I finished the first bridesmaid bouquet. It was pretty, but I wasn’t satisfied with it I wanted it better. And me being forced to take a work break to feed the kiddos gave me the step away break that I needed to process what it was that I didn’t like and obtain an idea to fix it.

Not everyone arranging flowers has kids in their space. But maybe you have a pet that needs being seen to. Maybe you have a phone call that has been pushed back long enough and it’s time to make.

Whatever you do in your normal life, be sure to continue it while you DIY your flowers. These moments are the moments that help you to refocus your mind and open the doors to inspiration and ideas that were hard pressed to come because of the tunnel vision of the focused drive.

What if something goes wrong?

Oh the stories I can tell you of things going wrong!

We always dream and envision things going smoothly and perfectly the first time. But let’s be honest, life happens.

This particular job didn’t go smoothly. In fact, I cried and I panicked. Because of course my thing that went wrong happened at night, when shops were closing down and I promised to deliver in the morning.

I was working with my submersed arrangements, enjoying the moment of doing something predictable, enjoyable, and very peaceful. I was working on my third vase when I heard what sounded like an industrial bug zapper going off. I had no idea what that was, because we don’t own a bug zapper.

My husband walked in and I told him about the noise, asking him if he knew what would make that sound. He shrugged and continued to check and see how the job was progressing. He looked over at the completed vases and asked if one of them was leaking because there was some water of the floor. I looked at him as if he was crazy. Of course there was water on the floor, I’m working with water.

Not even a minute later the bottom blew out of one of the completed vases and at least 5 gallons of water shot all over my hardwood floor.

To an outside observer, this was comedic gold! I’m talking I Love Lucy proportions.

The good news is that the flowers were perfectly fine, unharmed by what happened. And yes, the water got cleaned up.

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The stress was that I was a vase short, shops about to close, and no one would be open in the morning before I needed to deliver. I couldn’t go to my local go to shops. They would be closed by the time I arrived. Fortunately, there was one store I could make it to before they closed that possibly had what I needed. And I felt so blessed that they had exactly two matching ones that I could work into my design and fulfill my order, better than what I originally promised.

I share this story with you to not just make you laugh. (Yes I can laugh about this now!) But to show you that even in the professional world of event designing, these things happen to us as well.

Cry in the moment if you need the cry. It will release everything you’ve locked up inside during this whole process. You will feel refreshed afterward.

Acknowledge the moment for the tragedy that it is, but don’t let it stop you or put you into a freeze where you can’t get back to work.

What resources do you have to pull from to recover?

Is this obstacle something you can replace?

Can you still function with what it is that you have?

Call in the assistance of a loved one to be the clarity of mind that you are not in this moment. Loved ones are amazing people to act as support. Never forget or underestimate the people that surround you.

The photos for this week are from the wedding floral that I did for the inspiration picture at the beginning. The bride wanted to go with the garden style of floral. But I don’t want you to leave today thinking that this is the only way to use these beautiful flowers.

Next week I’m going to show you the different styles that I created with the left over flowers from this job. I can’t wait for you to show you these different inspirations that you can take and make for yourselves. Plus, I have one that is a couture shot! It’s not practical for a centerpiece, but it was sure fun to photograph.

See you next week!

Is there anything you want directions on how to build when it comes to floral design? Comment below!

Here are some Products that can assist you in your floral arranging.

This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commissions on products purchased through these links, but at no extra cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets and floral wholesaler.

Rose Cleaner Rose Stripper Thorn Remover Stem Cleaner Tool

I have this tool. It works for cleaning the stems of more flowers than just roses.

Premium Garden Shears

The larger shear is the one that I use for trimming larger flower stems and branches of greenery.

Floral Arrangement Kit

This is a good starter kit that has everything that is useful for making arrangements.

1/2″ Wide Floral Tape

This is a must have, even if you’re trying not to buy any extra items. I’ll go more into this next week. The trick to this tape is that you stretch it to make it sticky.

2 responses to “Making Arrangements”

JohnnyAtorm

September 14, 2023

The excellent answer, gallantly 🙂

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rajabet.com app download

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Same Flowers Other Styles – How I Can Do That

July 29, 2023

[…] example, if you remember from Making Arrangements last week, here are the pictures from some of the […]

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Making Flowers Possible

When I participate in wedding open houses, one of the most common things I would hear is “I/We can make that.”

Each and every time I heard that phrase I cringed. It didn’t matter if I heard it when I worked for an event decorating company (where I participated in over the top large event decorating) or when I branches out on my own. This phrase makes every professional cringe.

Just like a plumber who hears someone say, “Oh that’s easy! I can do that and save on a plumbing bill.” That plumber is not only cringing, but he’s laughing at you and thinking that he’ll see you in a day or two. You might very well fix that plumbing issue. But experience says that it’s a DIY plumbing job that will go wrong. And instead of paying a couple hundred dollars to the plumber, it’s a couple thousand dollar repair for a DIY “fix”.

That’s one reason why I started this blog. I like to contribute to the creative community, pass on skills that aren’t generally being passed down anymore, but also to help the DIY person succeed.

Here’s a glimpse of how you might receive your flowers from a distributor.

Here’s the thing, a professional is going to have inside deal on material costs and more importantly the knowledge and muscle memory on how to do a particular skill. They’re going to know the short cuts that save time. They also know all the wrong ways of doing things, know how to recover from a failed idea, and when to move on to the next idea in an expedited manner.

Is it possible for you to do your own wedding flowers?

Absolutely!

(The following pictures are the flowers that I used for this job. I’ve included names if any of these are unfamiliar to you. There are so many beautiful flowers in this world! Please don’t be limited by the ones that you see here. In these pictures I’m showing how I strip the stems bare in my prep work. I’ll talk about that in just a moment.)

I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks talking you through how you can make your own floral arrangements. I won’t share all of my trade secrets because I still love playing with flowers, but I want to help you avoid a head ache or two, plus a panic attack. I DIY most everything for my wedding and still after all this time, I remember the melt downs I had, especially when it came to the wedding invitations.

The stress on a DIY bride is real. So I want to help you, so that you can trust to come to me when you need a professional.

First things first, you have to prepare before you start.

The best way to kick start this is by having an inspiration picture. This will help you navigate through the online sites where you can order flowers to be shipped to your house or when you talk with a flower producer/distributor.

You might not know the names of the flowers you want to order.
You might be able to find a deal on a look alike flower.
There could be a budget friendlier alternative.
You can upscale with a rarer look alike.
An out of season option can be switched out with an in season look alike.

Inspiration pictures also give an idea on which flowers look good together. Nothing is worse than ordering flowers that you like individually but when you put them together, something just isn’t right.

Even with this wedding, which I made floral arrangements for last weekend, I went into my local flower distributor with a list of flowers I picked out (to imitate an inspirations picture) from online. But when I looked at the flowers in the walk in cooler, there were other ones that jumped out and added further inspiration so I couldn’t wait to arrange. When it came time to pick up the sales person helping me pulled a couple of additional bunches of other flowers that my flowers insured her with. From that additional pull, there was a different flower or two that looked better in the collective whole than the ones I originally thought I wanted.

(I’ll come back to this thought in two weeks when I show you additional arranging options using the same flowers!)

Once you’ve put in your flower order, you’ll want to schedule your pick up with a minimum of two days before your wedding or other special event. You will most definitely need two days if not three to make your arrangements. I don’t play with flowers every day and this job took me two days and some touch up work on the day of before loading up the flowers for the wedding.

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The Schedule I Gave Myself:

Day 1 Thursday–I picked up my flower order from my distributor. I took them back to my work space and got out buckets and vases and filled them with water. Then I went straight to work to prep my flowers for the next day.

Day 2 Friday–I spent all day arranging.

Day 3 Saturday/Wedding Day–examine all the bouquets and other arrangements. Does anything than to be adjusted or flowers switched out? Put on decorative elements, such as ribbon. Cut fresh ends, place in fresh water, and load up for morning delivery.

Your DIY arrangement schedule may need more time. You may need to start your prep work on a Wednesday, so you have an additional work day. The important thing to remember is that these flowers are going to take longer than you think they will.

If you are a bride who wants to do everything yourself, this schedule is probably something similar to what you will need to implement. If you like working in groups and want to make a flower arranging day, it might be possible to do this in one day. After all the more hands you have, the less work and time is required from you. Just be prepared that if you have others working with you, nothing is going to look the same. There will be variations in assembly and placement. So please make your choices based off of your expectation level. This will give you the least amount of stress and make DIY floral arranging more pleasurable.

For this wedding I made 3 bouquets (that were doubling as table centerpieces), 3 boutonnieres, and 6 large submersible vases.

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Preparing Your Flowers

Hopefully when you pick up/receive your floral delivery, the flowers were kept cool in transportation. Heat is going to make your flowers wilt. But don’t stress out! They will bounce back. The Purple Stock that I used was the bunch that wilted the most in transportation. They were the first bunch that I stripped the stems, cut the bottom of the stems at a 45° angle, and put in water in front of an air conditioner.

Prep your stems first, so the flowers can drink while you’re prepping other stems.

If your event is in this wonderful summer heat, you will want to make sure that you keep your flowers in a cool room. Heat is not your friend with many types of flowers. So if you’re event is outside in hot weather, also make sure that the flowers you use are hardy and won’t wilt in the heat.

At the bottom of this post, I’ll post some links to items that can be helpful not just for prepping your flowers but also items that you will need for assembling (the topic for next week) your floral arrangement.

So trimming the bottom of the stems at a 45° angle is what all florists will tell you is the optimum cut to allow your flowers to drink and hydrate themselves while you are working with them. By cutting at the bottom portion of the stem, you leave yourself length for making tall arrangements and giving yourself plenty of room to make additional trims if your flowers need another stem clean up.

Make sure that your scissors are brand new sharp. Old scissors will mash up the bottom of your stem and you will see that you will need to make a new trim on your stems in a day or two. The flowers will just struggle. Also, gardening sheers are amazing to have on hand if you are using flowers with thick stems (roses, Asiatic lilies, sunflowers, and others). Even new scissors will struggle with these larger stems.

Cleaning up the stems is definitely a task you want to do before you start making your arrangements. There are a few different reasons why you want to clean off the stems from leaves and thorn.

Thorns hurt!
Leaves take up room–anything not around the bloom face is just going to get in the way and not be seen.
Leaves resting in water will decompose quickly and make the water look muddy.
Cut flowers drink up water and try to keep everything on the stem alive. By removing the leaves, the flower focuses on keeping the blooms beautiful and fresh.

Once all your flowers are cleaned up and in water, you’ll also want to take the time to also break down your greenery and filler into more workable sizes. Most of my eucalyptus came as branches. Baby’s breath and other floral fillers come in poufy branches also.

If you’re not a fan of baby’s breath, my current favorite is Misty Blue Limonium. It’s a tiny robust flower just like baby’s breath, but tends to have a fan shape bunching of flower. Not to mention that Baby Blue has a hint of blue that still looks white from a distance. (You’ll see Baby Blue in a picture below where I show you my flowers all prepped and ready to work with.)

Do you need to add flower “food” to the water?

Because there is product, there is going to be an industry that tells you that you need to buy this food. I personally choose not to buy the flower preservation crystals. Even with the flowers that I keep around the house, they last longer when I just use filtered water and change the water every day or two. In fact, I have a bouquet of flowers from my husband that is 3 weeks old, and all I did was change the water frequently.

Other methods I’ve tried are sugar in the water and carbonated clear soda. These two methods work just the same as the flower packet I’ve gotten with the bouquets my husband buys.

If you want to use a plant food, you’re welcome to go that route. However I don’t want to you feel pressured to buy one more thing. Good filtered water is more than enough. If filtered water is not an option either, than make sure that you have water sitting out over night before your flowers arrive. This will allow chlorine and other chemicals to evaporate out.

Now that your flowers and greenery are drinking, stems cleaned, and voluptuous bunches are broken down to smaller, more manageable sizes, you are all prepared for assembling your arrangements.

For this first night with your flowers, give them space to breath. This is valuable for flowers like Asiatic lilies, whose buds will pop off if you accidently brush them. You want to keep them cool. If you don’t have a root cellar or other cold place, you’ll want to consider a well air conditioned room.

Avoid using your refrigerator to keep any of your flowers cold. Some flowers have sensitive petals and will freeze. Another thing that is not common knowledge is that certain fruits and vegetables can also influence the overall health of your flowers. For example, onions on the sandwich you have in the fridge for lunch is more than enough to cause petals on your flowers brown. So if you have a soda cooler available at home or your wedding venue, make sure that no one has left their lunch or other meal in the cooler!

Prep all your floral and greenery into separate buckets.

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Things To Watch Out For

The expectation when you purchase flowers to make your own arrangements is that the flowers you receive are perfect. Unfortunately, even with pesticides and herbicides used in commercial floral fields, there is going to be some damage that you may find in your flowers.

Two different diseases that I found on different flowers (rose and delphinium) in my purchase.

If you have diseased stems, you will notice this when you clean your stems. These are important to find. When you make arrangements, all your stems are right up against each other. And depending on the damage being caused by bacteria or viral infection, mold, or even burrowing pests, direct contact can potentially cause damage to the rest of your flowers. Unless you have experience working in a home garden, you probably haven’t seen instances like this and wouldn’t know how to deal with it. So the best thing to do is take these stems away and dispose of them.

This is one reason why I make sure I have a floral buffer. I have enough stems to do my job even when I have to dispose of a few flowers.

Another reason why a buffer is a great idea is that flowers can bruise.

Here are different types of bruising to look out for.

As you can see here, whether from harvesting or shipping, flowers can bruise. You might be fortunate and find that removing the outer (buffer) petals you can remove the bruised portions (which I did with the red bud.) However, it is possible that the bloom is bruised beyond an acceptable standard.

If you find blooms that are this damaged, you will want to catch this quickly! For example, I had five roses that disintegrated from severe bruising like this. The distribution center that I got these from have a policy where when you notify them/return the flowers in a 24 hour period there are options available; refund, exchange.

Before you make your floral purchase, find out what kind of return policy they have. Know in advance if there’s a chance that you’re going to be stuck with flowers that you can’t use. Is this company’s policy an acceptable risk?

Needless to say, it’s a very good practice to prep your flowers once you receive them. Not only does it help organize you and better manage your time. It also keeps the window of return/refund open for you.

As I mentioned above, even when you buy from a reputable company, your flowers may arrive in a condition that can surprise you. This picture, above, is pretty standard for buying from a field or wholesale distributer. These flowers are not damaged. This is real life. The industry calls these busted petals “buffer petals”.

Think of these petals as being your insurance policy. Roses are packaged together for shipment. Petals are going to be rumpled and discolored. When florists receive roses like this, they simply remove these buffer petals and reveal a pristine flower.

TIP: If you’re working with a budget wedding, these buffer petals (and other broken or too small flowers) are perfect for flower girl practice or even photo props for your photographer. With many wedding pictures taken before the ceremony, it’s a great option for your photographer to have a little something to play with if they’re inspired by your flowers!

Now that you’re flowers are prepared, you’re ready for a good night’s sleep!

Come back next week to get some ideas on how to construct your bouquet.

Here are some Products that can assist you in your floral arranging.

Rose Cleaner Rose Stripper Thorn Remover Stem Cleaner Tool

I have this tool. It works for cleaning the stems of more flowers than just roses.

Premium Garden Shears

The larger shear is the one that I use for trimming larger flower stems and branches of greenery.

Floral Arrangement Kit

This is a good starter kit that has everything that is useful for making arrangements.

1/2″ Wide Floral Tape

This is a must have, even if you’re trying not to buy any extra items. I’ll go more into this next week. The trick to this tape is that you stretch it to make it sticky.

What’s your favorite flowers to play with?

3 responses to “Making Flowers Possible”

wedding bouquet

August 12, 2023

I think the admin of this website is truly working hard in favor of his web page,
since here every material is quality based material.

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Same Flowers Other Styles – How I Can Do That

July 29, 2023

[…] see below the rose. This is red yarrow and I wanted to spot light it for a moment. Two posts back, Making Flowers Possible, I mentioned how the sales person had pulled additional flowers for me that had inspired her when […]

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Making Arrangements – How I Can Do That

July 22, 2023

[…] the last post, Making Flowers Possible, we went through the process of cleaning your flowers and preparing them to assemble your bouquets. […]

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Surprise Gift

It never fails that a moment in life comes when you forgot to get someone a gift or you received a last minute invitation. What do you do?

There’s a couple of things that I keep in my craft room all the time: fabric, ribbon, card stock, picture frames, paint, beads… You get the idea.

We had the privilege of meeting our neighbor’s parents, who came for a visit from halfway around the world. It’s amazing to see how much you can connect with people, especially when you don’t speak the same language. And even more amazing when you find out that you share some similar interests and find commonality.

It’s even more special when you receive an invitation to be a part of celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.

I’ve been married for over a decade. So much has changed in the world since that day. I tried to think of how much the world will change in another 50. It blows my mind.

What is it like to celebrate a 60th anniversary in another country–one you may or may not have thought you’d be in when you were younger?

Of course I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to celebrate and honor a long lasting relationship like this. And while thinking about how to give a meaningful gift, with little personal history, and something that’s not burdensome for when they return home, I chose to focus on the memories. Celebrating the last 60 years of their memories together and giving them a memento of this trip, this moment in time.

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My husband had taken a group picture at the end of a visit where we had them over and made for them their first American meal. I chose a picture because it travels well and is minimalistic for those who gravitate to that way of life. But I also couldn’t pass up giving some flowers because it’s something that brings happiness in the moment.

So for this quick to gather gift that’s pack full of memories and meaning, here’s an idea for you to consider the next time you need to find a gift in under two hours.

Pick a photo of you and the other person from your phone and send it to a local place that can print it out in an hour.

While that is processing you can stop by a shop, florist, road side stand, farmer’s market, or garden and gather some flowers that have meaning.

In this instance I chose sunflowers because with our guests, they saw the sunflower I had grown from seed and we talked about sunflowers and sunflower oil for quite some time. Sunflowers may not be their favorite flower, but in this gift, it’s a nod to something we connected with in the middle of a language barrier.

It just so happened that at home I had a vase on a shelf that I was saving for a time to reuse by gifting to someone, and I had some fabric with sunflower print on them.

As you notice here, sunflowers can be awkward if they’re not bundled. So I decided to bundle the flowers with a strip of cloth.

For a professional look of wrapping a bouquet, you want to first trim down the fabric you want to use into a strip. No matter how nicely you cut, the fabric will always fray. To give a clean edge, you want to press the strip of fabric. First, fold and press the raw edge. Then you’ll tri-fold and press the fabric into a wide ribbon. Now the edges won’t fray on you and you didn’t have to sew.

To make this wrap, you want to put one edge of the ribbon between the stems. Then you can wrap it tightly around the bouquet without the ribbon slipping on you.

When you get to the end of the ribbon, you want to fold the ribbon up at a 90° angle. The tuck this final edge down behind the wrap, between the stems. If the wrap is snug, it will hold the ribbon in place without using tape, pins, glue, or any other fastener.

The beauty of making a wrap like this is that the person you are gifting this to can use the fabric after the flowers are long gone. If this person is sentimental, they will no doubt find a way of repurposing and reusing this strip of fabric.

Don’t forget to use a small scrap of the fabric to make a card that matches.

Here, I took a piece of 8.5 x 11″ sheet of card stock and trimmed along the short edge a strip 4″ wide. This strip I folded in half to make a blank card that is 4 x 4.25″.

Using the left over sunflower fabric, I decided how wide of a ribbon I wanted to glue to the front of the card. You can be as precise as you want to be. I chose to wing it and just cut the fabric into a small strip.

This time I had to be careful about the edge because there’s no room for a folded seam. This fabric print looks good with a frayed edge, so I saved time by just removing the stray threads and embrace the fray. (As opposed to if I need to have a very clean edge and have to cut a straight edge.) Now the sides and bottom of the card need to have a straight edge, so I leave this ribbon large and will cut it down after I glue it to the cardstock.

For gluing the ribbon down, you want to decide where you want to place it and mark off the area. You will need to liberally apply glue to prevent fraying on the card, so drawing a glue line is very important. Make sure that where you draw the line will be hidden behind the ribbon, so make sure the line is lower than where you want it. Apply the glue and spread it evenly across the whole section, even over the edges. If you don’t put glue on the edges, the fabric will lift from the cardstock.

Gently lay the ribbon on top of the glue and make any adjustments that you need. When you are satisfied, take a scraper or plastic card, place it in the middle of the ribbon and press it to the edge of the card. Then place the scraper/card in the middle and press down in the opposite direction. This will secure your fabric to the card and remove any air pockets that may have been present.

Now that your ribbon is secure, you can flip the card over. With a pair of scissors, trim off the excess fabric.

I trim from the back because I can see exactly where the edge of the cardstock is.

The blank card is now ready for you to write you message on.

By now, your pictures should be ready to pick up. Once you have them, you can place them in a picture frame and you’re ready to bag or wrap your present.

From this gift given, the part of the gift that meant the most was the blessing that I wrote inside the card.

In today’s world, a blessing spoken over another person is something that’s not talked about. But it’s the most powerful gift that we can give another person. And to have those words writing for the person you’re gifting to read over and over again is life changing.

If you are unfamiliar with a blessing, it’s what you tell someone that you see in them now, but you also what you desire for their future. Instead of “I hope you have a happy birthday” or anniversary, I tell the person what I want to see in their lives for this coming year or the years moving forward.

In a time where people are struggling to see their purpose in life, why they matter, the most important thing you can give a person is a vision of something to look forward to. And the best part about a blessing that you speak over a person is that it’s not something that can be bought. It shows the person that you see them, you value them, and that they have a purpose to live for.

Whether you’re looking for making a meaningful gift on a tight budget, don’t know what to give a person, need an impactful last minute gift, or any other reason, know that you can speak into a person’s life and it means more to them than anything else you give them. So no matter what your gift giving situation is, know that a blessing from you can be the most impactful thing that you can give another person.

Never underestimate the power of your words.

And don’t hesitate to gift a blessing!

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One response to “Surprise Gift”

Roy

September 5, 2023

Hi to every one, tthe comtents prsent aat this web pzge are really remarkable foor peolle knowledge,
well, keerp up the good wotk fellows.

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