How To Design And Keep Flower Arrangements Beautiful For Days

Designing a floral arrangement can be a daunting task if you don’t know what you are doing. Here I will give you several tips to create a beautiful arrangement and keep it fresh for days to come. When selecting your flowers, be sure to purchase an assortment of sizes and heights, this will create a more interesting flower arrangement.

In the image at the top of this blog, I used hydrangeas, roses, peonies, Chocolate queen Ann’s lace, and lisianthus. Notice my greenery also has a lot of different colors and textures, I used variegated boxwood, green hollyhocks, and baby cabbage.

Cleaning The New Flowers

It is very important when you first bring home your flowers to clean them, this entails removing all of the packaging, rubber bands, etc. Make a small cut on an angle on the bottom of the stem and place it in fresh water.

Choosing The Vase

Choose a vase and fill with water, you may add an aspirin as this will help to keep the flowers fresh longer , but I also have a few other tips below for this. Think outside of the box like I did here, I used shoes… I simply put a small piece of oasis in a baggie and inserted it into the shoe, a container does not always have to be a vase.

If you have a larger opening on your container, you will need to either create a grid over the top using tape in a criss cross pattern, leaving holes to insert the flowers or purchase one of these great flower holders from Etsy. This will make the entire process go much smoother as it will keep the flowers in place.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/258262494/budable-flower-arranger-1-budables

If Working With Roses

When working with roses it is important to remove the thorns, if you have a lot of roses, you may want to purchase a thorn remover, this set from Amazon also has two foliage removers and a pair of gloves. I am sure you could also buy them individually.

If your roses are tight and you want them to be more open, here are a few tricks

You can fold the petals down and push them out
You can blow on the rose and it will slightly open
You can use a diffuser on a hair dryer and this will open the roses as well

You never want to have any foliage or leaves in the water, so it is a must to remove the foliage from the stem from the water line down.

Arranging Process

First Steps

When starting to arrange the flowers, you want to give each stem a fresh cut on an angle and dip the end of the flower into Quick dip for a second or two. This helps to open the veins of the flower and allows for proper hydration.

Creating The Greenery Base

Start by creating a base of greenery for your arrangement, start from the outside and work your way inwards.

One of my favorite tricks is to use Leaf shine…… on the foliage, I LOVE this stuff, it makes your greenery so pretty and shiny.

(I usually spray this on the greenery before I add any flowers)

You can purchase this on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Chrysal-Leaf-shine-Large-25oz-Bonus

Arranging the Flowers

Next place your largest flowers, such as your hydrangeas in the arrangement, I like to work in odd numbers, so use 1, 3, 5 or 7. ( This is true is most elements of design )

Then start with the next largest flower and continue until your flowers are used up.

Change the water daily as this really helps to keep the flowers fresh and the water clear.

Again I like to think outside of the box and add in unusual elements, such as feathers, fruit, vegetables or some fun branches. All of these types of elements add interest to your arrangement.

Hope you enjoyed these tips.