the Renaissance Housewife
  • Home
  • Topics
    • Saving >
      • Kitchen >
        • Food >
          • Recipes
      • Bath & Laundry
      • Medicine Cabinet
      • Office
      • Electricity
      • Gardening
      • Foraging
      • Animals
      • Weekly F. A.'s
      • Printables & Downloads
    • Earning
    • Investing
  • Books
  • About
    • RH Recommends
    • Newsletter & Updates
    • Travel
    • Beta Readers
    • Legal Stuff

How to Make $10.00 flowers look like $40.00

11/19/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Good afternoon everyone! I hope you are having a great weekend. Today I'm going to share a few tips I learned as a floral design student. These tips will help make a $10.00 or $15.00 Walmart bouquet look like it cost a lot more... just in time for Thanksgiving. :)

Supplies and Tools

First off, you'll need some flowers. You will also use floral foam for this project. Most people just re-cut their cheap flowers and pop them in a vase. This looks okay (I mean, how can flowers look bad?) but it won't look professional. Professional-looking vase arrangements are much harder to do than foam arrangements. In addition to the block of foam to fit your container, you will also need an outer decorative container AND an inner waterproof container. I am using a basket-style outer container and a clean reused cottage cheese container for the inside.

When I worked at a flower shop, I learned that customers got an $8.00 discount for bringing in their own vase or container. If you are buying a professional flower arrangement at retail, a good portion of the price has to do with the container.
Picture
Picture
Tools I used for this arrangement were sturdy floral scissors, a pocket knife, and a roll of floral tape (this is sticky green tape- not the stretchy floral tape). You can use electrical tape or even a tiny bit of duct tape to replace the green floral tape.

I also used leaf shine and "crowning glory", which is a spray-on flower preservative/shine to make my arrangement last longer. Both of those things are optional, but to make your arrangement look better.

Directions

1. Cut your block of floral foam to fit the inner container. You will need to use the water-sucking foam, and not regular styrofoam.

Drop the block of foam in a container of water. Let the water soak up naturally. This may take some time, and you will want to shove the block down underneath the water to make it go faster. However, this will leave dry spots in the middle of your foam, where the flowers will need water the most. If the block has stopped "drinking" water, you can gently turn it on its side to expose dry parts to water.

Save the little bits and pieces of foam, and put them in the water, too. After you've put the large wet block of foam in your waterproof inner container, fill the nooks and crannies with those little bits and pieces.
Picture
Picture
2. Next it is time to prepare the greenery. Greenery is the difference between a cheap bouquet of flowers and a real arrangement.

When buying houseplants, I carefully choose plants that can double as a source of greenery for floral arrangements. One of these houseplants is a "corn plant" that I bought at Walmart. Leaves of the corn plant are very similar to the aspidistera leaves used in real flower shops.

Below is a technique I learned when working at the flower shop. It commonly used in bridal bouquets or edging around arrangements, as well as providing fullness.
Picture
Picture
The other greenery I used for this project was orange branches. I started an orange tree from seed when I was a teenager. I have been waiting almost a decade for actual oranges, but all I get is greenery. Oh well- at least it's good for something!

Use the greenery to provide a "base" for your arrangement. I put six stems into my foam below. You want to provide decent coverage, but not too much because you will need places to poke the flowers in.

After adding the greenery, I sprayed it with leaf shine.
Picture
Picture
3. Add flowers. There really is no formula for doing this, especially if you are working with a cheap bouquet of flowers. Typically I like to work in groups of threes, but you can see that the bouquet came with four different colors of flowers. Sometimes the flowers come broken or the stems are too short. You just gotta deal with it!!

The bouquet flowers will need to be prepared. This could be a whole post in itself. I should have taken pictures of this step but I forgot to. :( Basically, you will want to strip the leaves 2" below the stem of the bottom-most flower on the branch. For this arrangement, I cut off the bottom three or four flowers (and their stems) from every branch to use as individual flowers for the bottom arrangement.

Always leave 2" of stem to poke into the foam. This will ensure that your flowers have water to drink.

You will want a focal point for your arrangement. My focal point is where the grasses shoot out on the right side (see below). These are artificial grasses that I saved from a store-bought arrangement.

I filled in the holes with single-flower stems, ornamental grasses, and a cute ceramic turkey (mounted on a stick).
Picture
Picture
The only way to get good at floral design is to practice often. When I was a student, I made at least one arrangement every week, and a wide variety of them. You can buy some books or DVDs to help you out, but in the end there is no recipe for a perfect arrangement. You will have to feel it out. Most of the time I think my designs look terrible because I know where every gap and stray flower and lopsided part is. However, most people will not notice these small imperfections.

4. Set the arrangement in its final decorative container.
Picture
Picture
And there you have it! A quite decent looking centerpiece for the kitchen table. You will need to replenish the water supply every few days. I use a syringe in order to avoid dumping water all over the table.

With practice (and with more tools and flowers to work with), your designs will start to look better and better. My designs aren't as nice as those from our local flower shop, but I think they are just as good as the local grocery store designs.

Additional tips:

1. Check out some library books about flower design. You can also watch free video tutorials on Youtube. More time consuming ways to learn include having a friend teach you, taking a class, or working at a flower shop (for free if you have to).

2. Invest in some supplies. Floral tape, water-soaking foam, a good pair of shears or knife, and perhaps even floral glue.

3. Use flowers and greenery that are free. Even city-dwellers can keep a houseplant around for greenery. You can also grow flowers in your garden or clip ornamental plants or tree branches around your house.

4. Dissect garage sale or purchased arrangements and salvage the supplies. Hubs buys me flowers once or twice a year, and I always save the containers and little ornamental bits to reuse. 

5. Buy discount flowers. At our local Kroger, sometimes they will discount bouquets that are starting to go limp. However, many flowers in the bouquet are still good and will last another week if they are taken care of. With a little creativity and greenery, those $5.00 flowers can look like $30.00.

6. Buy live plants when they are past their prime. Kroger and Walmart mark down orchids when there aren't many blooms left. After Christmas amaryllis bulbs go on sale, and in the spring you can find forced, potted tulip and hyacinth bulbs on sale after they have dropped their flowers. In late winter sometimes you can find houseplants on sale as well. Baby these discount plants for a year or so, and you will bring them back to life. Then next season, you will have plenty of free design material!

Til next time,
-Bethany
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Bethany

    Housewife, happy wife, and mama to one. :)

    Picture

    Picture
    The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food
    How to Eat for $10.00
    ​per Week

    Picture
    The Housewife's Guide to Menu Planning
    A Weekly Menu to Save
    Time & Money
    Picture
    The Housewife's Guide to
    Frugal Fruits and Vegetables

    No Garden? No Problem!

    Watch Meals From the Bunker:

    Picture

    Check out my Youtube Channel!

    RSS Feed


    Picture
    Baby Girl's Birth Story
    Picture
    8 Cheap Ways to Eat Healthy
    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Animals
    Book Reviews
    Books
    Christmas
    Cleaning
    Clothing
    Cooking
    Couponing
    Education
    Ego
    Electricity
    Farmers Market
    Finance
    Foraging
    Frugal
    Frugal Accomplishments
    Frugality
    Garage Sales
    Gardening
    Gifts
    Grocery Budget
    Grocery Shopping
    Herbs
    History
    Hobby Farm
    Home Based Business
    Home-based Business
    Home Decorating
    Housekeeping
    Industry
    Languages
    Laundry
    Marriage
    Meal Planning
    Medicine
    Minimalist
    Network Marketing
    Organization
    Plants
    Product Reviews
    Quotes
    Recipes
    ROI
    Rv
    Sewing
    Simplicity
    Spanish
    Spending Report
    Travel

    Archives

    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Full Disclosure & Disclaimer

    Picture
    Picture
    I get cash back for many online purchases including wedding gifts and Ebay stuff!

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from dasWebweib, amanessinger, thewritingreader, diakosmein