DIY Flower Arrangements

Originally, I’d planned to order a few fresh bouquets for the Celebration of Life we recently held for my mother. Oddly enough, a few weeks before the event when I was in the area helping Dad with a few outdoor projects, I decided to run by the florist shop and found it closed due to an air-conditioning malfunction.

I planned to call and order the flowers when I returned home, but then Dad and I looked at the extended forecast. The day of the Celebration of Life was supposed to be 104 degrees! I had visions of pathetic wilted flowers and decided it might be better to just do some silk arrangements.

A few days after I came home, I made a trip to our local JoAnn’s store. Much to my delight, I discovered all of their spring flowers were on sale for 80% off. (Does that really ever happen?) I think I purchased every pink flower they had on the sale (and a few that weren’t).

I ended up with six bouquets from the three very large garbage bags full of flowers I brought home.

So I thought I’d share with you how I assembled the flowers.

Captain Cavedweller thought it would be funny to bury me in all the blooms.

The first thing I did was sort out the flowers into groups. You can see the greens, or foliage at the top right. The secondary flowers and filler, and then the focal flowers at the bottom right.

Thankfully I had plenty of containers on hand to choose from (because I tend to save vases and baskets!) Adding foam to the containers made it so much easier to create the arrangements.

Measure your focal flowers against the container to make sure the height looks good. If not, trim the ends of the stems (using scissors for fresh cutting at a diagonal, or wire cutters for silk stems).

Start with the foliage in your container. If you don’t have foam, crisscross the stems to create a base.

Then you want to add your focal flowers. Once you have them in place, add the secondary flowers and filler. You can easily rearrange them until they look exactly how you want. Tuck in more foliage and filler to fill any empty spaces.

I like to finish my arrangements with a ribbon bow (attach it to a long piece of wire and insert in the container), but you certainly don’t have to add ribbon.

Feel free to mix colors, textures, and sizes of flowers.

I loved this one so much, I brought it home and it’s sitting on my dining room table.

That’s all there is to it. Easy, right!