Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi everyone. I'm Melissa and if you're new here, welcome and if you're a returning student, then I'm so excited to have you back and joining us again. If you're new to my classes here, then a little bit about me. I'm Melissa and I run a floral design company in Denver, Colorado where I do events and daily orders and teach workshops in-person and online. I bring all of my experience working with flowers here to you on Skillshare so I can teach you everything that I do and hopefully to inspire you to elevate your floral designs. This class is dedicated to more intermediate to advanced level floral designers or flower enthusiasts. If you've been wanting to learn some extra, more advanced techniques and skills to up level your floral designs. Then this is definitely the class for you. In this class, I'm going to walk you through all of the different steps in order to achieve this really artful and feminine floral arrangement that I created. I'm going to walk you through the supplies, how to prep your vase, choosing flowers and choosing a color palette. The types of flowers that you can buy and where to source them, prepping for and caring for the flowers. Then I'll walk you through each layer of the arrangement, going step-by-step with each flower, and walking you through how I handle them and how I choose to design with them. Because this arrangement is a little bit more sophisticated and advanced, it's ideal for an event, a photo shoot, a dinner party for a high-end client or if you just want to practice for fun and take photos of it and play around with it. No matter what you create this centerpiece for, It'll be really good practice for you as you build up your skills and it will give you the tools to go ahead and practice using some more advanced techniques and shed some more light on how I pair flowers together and also how I pick out a color palette that will help you to elevate your designs. Let's get started.
2. Gathering Your Supplies: In this section, I'm going to show you all the supplies you need to design your centerpiece. Here I have a lazy Susan, which is really handy, then I have some floral tape, a pair of clippers, a nice compostable, and I also have some chicken wire which is going to help give structure to the arrangement. These key supplies support the entire arrangement and hold everything together, and you'll find that using chicken wire is actually really, really nice compared to using the normal greenery grid that I'm used to teaching on and designing with, and it also gives you the opportunity to omit completely using greenery if you wanted to, which I'll talk about it later. The chicken wire just holds all the stems up in the places that you usually want them to. You don't have to fiddle around as much with getting stuff to stay, it's a great time-saver and you can recycle it. It's definitely my choice when it comes to designing florals because it's just so easy to work with. You can find chicken wire from your local flower shop or if you have access to wholesale markets, you can easily source them online or at your market. A clean workspace with everything ready to go, and handy is important when you're designing, especially if you're on a time crunch for something like an event. For the face, I used this really pretty compostable because it just gives an more elevated, sophisticated look rather than a clear glass space, which can sometimes also look beautiful. But in this case, I wanted to go for something a little bit more dramatic and eventful and feminine and the color of it is pretty neutral it's a little bit bluish, which I think compliments the warm color palette that I'm going to use with this floral design. You can also again, go to your wholesale market if you can, or buy clippers from somewhere like Amazon or just your local hardware store and clear floral tape. You can also find at a local flower shop and just ask to buy some off of them or your wholesale market. I got my lazy Susan from target, but I think you can get them pretty much anywhere that sells them. So what you're seeing me do is taking the chicken wire and creating a little ball of, it doesn't have to be perfect. It's super easy and it's really malleable, and then you just push it firmly down into the vase, making sure that all of the little ends that are sticking out are fully inside, and then you don't want to leave it just like that, so we're going to tape it down just to make sure it stays in place, and this is what the floral tape comes in handy for. It's best to do it with clear tape, so you don't see the mechanics of it through the flowers and you just cut it off like that. I'm doing just really quickly a crisscross, making an X. Then what you need to do is take another piece and layer it over the rim of the vase so that everything is secure and nothing falls out and this is just extra protection, and I highly suggest doing this when you work with chicken wire. To recap, the supply is part of this whole class is really important because having the right supplies makes your life a lot easier when you're designing. You'll need a vase, chicken wire, floral tape, a good pair of clippers, and ideally if you wanted to up level your design experience, you could get a Lazy Susan. Again, the compost bowl is really nice to create an elevated arrangement, but that's also not very necessary. But for this specific arrangement, it's great to use with chicken wire. They pair really well together. Go ahead and collect all of the items that you need to design, clear off a good workspace, and next we're going to talk about the flowers.
3. Choosing a Color Palette: One of the trickiest things that I've learned over the years as the florist has been picking a color palette. It's something that I've really had to develop and fine-tune my eye to look for when I'm working with flowers. Even though I have a graphic design and art background, color theory and picking a color palette has been one of my biggest roadblocks or challenges that I faced when designing with flowers. Because for example, I would go to the flower market and see all these pretty flowers, but not really have a clear direction of what palette I wanted to choose. Maybe one flower stood out to me that I really loved, but it was a purple, and then another flower stood out to me that I really loved and it was a flower that the color didn't necessarily go with. I think a lot of what color palette choosing is about is having a really clear direction of where you want to go and balancing that with having fun and playing with color. It depends on where you're sourcing your flowers from. But, what's available will really limit and sometimes dictate what color palette you can work with, unless you're planning ahead for a wedding or an event and may have a specific color palette in mind and you need to order flowers in advance. But if you're designing something more in the moment and you're sourcing from flowers that are available right now, then what you can do is walk into your market or wherever you buy flowers and what I like to do is choose one flower that really stands out to me. I usually will love the color of it too. But it should be really fresh, seasonal, beautiful and then I will build off of that color and build a color palette. What I like to do is either do a monochromatic, more like color family scheme, where I use all shades of really warm colors or cool colors. Or you can play with complementary colors, which are basically opposite colors on the color wheel. But in this case, for this specific arrangement, I built a monochromatic, similar color family scheme of all really warm, beautiful bronzy, yellow, peachy, red shades. In this case, for this design that I did, I literally walked into the market and I saw these peachy pink dahlias and I just built off of that in a monochromatic color family scheme. I chose specifically to not use any greenery because for this specific arrangement, I didn't want the green to throw off all of my warm family colors. Because green is a cool color and all the colors that I'm working with in this design are warm tones. A basic rule of thumb that I would recommend to a more beginner or intermediate level florist when it comes to color schemes, is to not use too many colors at once. That's because for me, I always look at a floral arrangement as an art piece, and if there are a ton of colors going on, it's really overwhelming to your eyes. By choosing and limiting your color palette to just a few colors, specifically, if you're using cool and warm tones, I would say keep it really minimal at first and you can always bring in white, which acts as a neutral color. That will really help you in creating color palettes and start to learn how to develop an eye for color. Sometimes color theory comes really easily to people and people have a really good eye for color. But if you're someone like me who struggled a little bit in the beginning and I really had to work on building color palettes and developing my eye for it, I would say, look at your basic color wheel and then build off of either complementary colors or work in the monochromatic color families to start. If you really want to challenge yourself, if you're using chicken wire, obviously, you don't have to create a grid of greenery because the chicken wire will help hold all the flowers together. You can challenge yourself by taking out any greenery or using foliage that is in the same color families as the flowers that you're using. Just start to have fun with it and play around with it and get comfortable with pairing the different colors together. Something else that I did to help build by eye for color is to look at Instagram or Pinterest and start to notice all of the similarities between the arrangements that you're drawn toward, specifically around color. If you notice that people are not using greenery in the flower designs that you like, then try to not use any greenery in your designs and see how that changes the whole look and feel of your designs. Then another thing that I like to do is get inspired by nature and the seasons. For the springtime in summer, it's a lot of bright colorful palettes. Then when it goes more into fall, you can do more brown, earthy tones. You can get inspired by that. Then you can also draw from just inspiration all around you. If you see a color when you're taking a walk, that you're really drawn towards, you can remember that and think about it and bring that color in or a color pairing in that you see, and use it in your floral designs.
4. Choosing Your Flowers: One of the questions that I get asked the most is how do I pair flowers together? Or in other words, how do I know what kinds of flowers to put with other kinds of flowers and what looks best. I have a rule of thumb that I generally adhere to in all of my floral designs. Which is always having a focal Flower, which is the biggest flour. Then I have medium-sized accompanying flowers to go with the vocal flowers. Then I have filler flowers which are, smaller flowers or flowers that have a lot of little texture on them. Then I'll have some sort of foliage element, like in this arrangement, I'm using some vines that I foliaged outside of my house. I always like adding a little bit of organic wildness into my arrangements. Whether that's vines or some natural-looking foliage, that always adds a nice element as well, but it's not completely necessary. If you go off of these rules of thumb, you'll create a really nice-looking arrangement, because offering all these different shapes, sizes, and textures will create enough variation for the eye. So that when you're looking at an arrangement, you'll see a lot of different things going on, but they all are cohesive and have a nice balance and harmony. Of course, like you learned in the last lesson, when you're choosing flowers, you also want to think about the color palette that you're using. You have to fine tune your ability to stick within a color palette or go off of a color palette that you have in mind. While picking out specific flowers that you think will go together. I personally think that color is probably the most important between the two. In an advanced arrangement or in even a more simplified arrangement, you could use simply just one kind of flower and one kind of filler flower or greenery to create a really elegant, simplified look. You can break these rules of thumb. But this is my general guideline to pairing flowers together.
5. Processing & Flower Care: I want to go over really quick. What I like to do and what you should do when you buy flowers is to make sure that they get water immediately once you get back to your studio or wherever you're working out of, and you want to process the flowers. That means taking off all of the greenery off of the stems, and cutting the stems, and putting them into fresh cool water and storing them in a cool environment, a cooler or a refrigerator. This will just help the flowers last longer, and this is really important when handling and working with flowers before you start designing with them. The reason why you want to take off all of the greenery off the stems or any little pieces off of the stems, is because you don't want those to touch the water. The reason for that is because the leaves have bacteria on them and when those leaves with bacteria get in contact with the water, then bacteria will start to grow and then that will ruin your whole arrangement. You want to be really meticulous about this and make sure to process your flowers, take off all of the greenery off the stems that will touch the water so that you can ensure a really beautiful, healthy, long-lasting floral arrangement.
6. Start with Building A Base: I'm going to start out with this yarrow, which is my fuller flower, and grab my clippers. We're going to start to build a base. Whatever smaller, more textured ingredient that you have is perfect for a vase. I'm going to cut the stems pretty short because I want to cover up the mechanics of my chicken wire and tape so that you don't see that. That's why I'm cutting the stem so short is to just hide that part of it. I don't have any system for doing this. I just want to fill in some pieces all over to start to create that first layer. A cool thing about creating a layer like this, like a base, is that once you start to layer on top of it, you can see through some of the higher flowers and look at the yarrow or whatever your base is. It just gives it that extra dimension that is so beautiful in a more elevated, more advanced designs. You'll see too that I'm just taking extra care to pluck off any little leaves or things that I see on the stems of the flowers so that they don't touch the water. I just do this to have the best quality, longest lasting arrangement. Go ahead and if you're following along, start to build out your base of flowers and then we can move onto the next layer.
7. Add Foliage for Shape: For this arrangement, I also I'm going to use just a little bit of greenery. As you can see, I picked some vines that are really pretty and have a really pretty shape and gives it that natural, wild organic feeling, which I love to incorporate into my designs. What I did is I went outside of my house and my yard and picked some of these little vines growing, and I like them because they go with the color palette, even though they do have a little bit of green in them, they have this brown bronzy tint to them and that's why I used them. But I didn't use a lot, I just wanted it to be like an accent and also to help create the shape of them, so I'm going to create the basic shape for the arrangement with these guys. For example, I put one dripping down off to the right, and then I'm pulling one and placing it up to the left so that its highest point is on the top left and the lowest point is on the bottom right. With all my other designs, this is how I normally design. That just gives your eye direction when you're looking at the arrangement, so we usually read like a book from the top left to the bottom right and so that's what I'm doing with this arrangement. I also just put in a third little piece on the bottom, spilling out of the arrangement.
8. Adding Supporting Flowers - Roses: For the second layer of this arrangement, I am going to work with these really pretty roses that are in this like golden bronze color and I think these are Colombo roses. That's what they're called. I've already basically processed all of them I've picked off all the stems and the thorns and everything. But some of the petals on the outside you can pluck off if they're not looking very pretty and I'm going to build off of the yellow that I put in, but start to create that second layer. What I like to do with any arrangement that I do, it's like just what I do is I put one flower in the front, off to the side, so not in the center. But I have it dripping over the edge of it and you saw me running my finger along it has like a natural curve. So I am using that to my advantage and accentuating that dropping out of the vase shape and then I like to layer my second rose next to it, a little bit longer I'm cutting the stem a little bit longer and then placing it right on top next to that main first rose that I did. A trick to using chicken wire is that it's easiest if you twist the stem of the flower that you're putting in, and that way it will go in a little bit easier. I have a lot of roses, so I'm going to put a lot of these roses in here, creating that second layer and it's also going to create more shape. So we're building small to large. So I'm doing the same thing on the other side of it, so we have the two main sides of the arrangement. So I'm just making sure that each side has a good amount of roses and inevitably some of the vines and stuff will move around but that's okay. We can move them back to where we want them to be. Sometimes in the beginning it's a little bit tricky. So you can see I've created two sides that are coming out, one on the left and one on the right and it's creating this like V-shape or like almost W-shape but with one side having more height than the other side. I'm layering that rose over top of the other rose. The reason why I do this is because when you make group flowers together, I think that looks really nice and pleasing to the eye. But also it gives it more interest.
9. Adding the Focal Flower - Dahlias: Now we're going to talk about the dahlias, which are the focal flower. If you remember, these were the flowers that spoke to me when I walked into the flower market, so we're going to highlight them and celebrate them. Even though they're a little bit smaller than the roses, there's still going to act as the focal flower, because we're going to make them stand out with the placement. With the dahlias they have tubes as their stem, they're not like other flowers. They also have that bigger, thicker part of the stem and then it goes to a thinner part of the stem. I'm just cutting off the bottom thick part, because it won't necessarily fit into my chicken wire holes. I'm going to nestle these next to the roses, but make sure that they have enough room to breathe, so that they can have a space of their own and get a chance to stand out next to all the other flowers. I'm putting in my other dahlia right next to the other one, a little bit higher. This will draw more attention to the dahlias when you group them together. If they don't go in exactly where you want them to, you have to play around with it and reposition them until you get the right place. But once you've got them in the right place, they'll stay there because the chicken wire is so nice and it stabilizes everything. Now I'm going in with the yellowish-orangey dahlia and I'm going to place these around the arrangement. You can see I'm cutting off a little piece on the stem where there was like a knob on it. I just want the stem to be one smooth stem, so that it's easy to put into my chicken wire. I am putting it in at an angle. I'm creating a tier system. You can see there's the lowest rose, and then the medium rose, and then the tallest dahlia that I'm going to put in, and it's on the left side. If you remember, we read from the top left to the bottom right. I'm going to put higher pieces on the top left. As you look down more towards the right, your eye lands on those two pink dahlias. Since we have a front and a back to the arrangement, you want to make sure to utilize that lazy Susan, and spin your arrangement around to see the back and to work on the back. I did a few pieces in the front, and now I'm going to balance it out, and add some dahlias to the back of the arrangement. I'm going to do pretty much the same thing that I did on the other side. But let the flowers that have already been placed in the arrangement dictate where I'm going to put in my new flowers. Something that I like to do that I've always done since I was a beginner florist, is put the flower up against the arrangement, to see where I might want it to go, before actually committing to putting the flower in a specific place. This also helps with figuring out how short you want to cut your stem. I'm putting in a dahlia that's a little bit taller, so we can still mimic that left to right or in this case, right top to left bottom shape. I'm layering in the yellow peachy dahlias on this side too, so that we have a nice balance. For this one, I'm going to put in a really short stemmed one, just so that the eye can rest in the middle area of the arrangement on some shorter stems. It's really beneficial and will help you get those stems in where you want them to go, if you twist the stem back and forth. Because sometimes they can get caught up on the chicken wire in there and you want to make sure you're getting your stem all the way down to the bottom. I'm adding just a few more dahlias to the arrangement. Don't worry if the arrangement looks a little sparse and weird shaped. I'm going to go in with some other roses, and create more of a shape with it. But I wanted to get in these dahlias first, but that I knew exactly where they were going to go in the arrangement.
10. Hiding the Mechanics with Strawflower: Really quick. I just wanted to show you I have these straw flowers which will last pretty much forever. They're already dried and their stems are kind of flimsy. I'm going to use them as a base along with the art that I did previously. But this is mostly just to cover up any of the what it's called is Mechanics of the Arrangement, which means we're just hiding the chicken wire from showing through. I'm cutting the stems really short. I don't really care about putting the stems totally inside the chicken wire because the stems are super flimsy. But this is just like a hack that I used for this specific arrangement. You don't have to do this every time but if you have greenery, this is usually what we'll cover up the mechanics. But in this case, since I am challenging myself not to use any greenery except for the two little vines. This is going to be a really great smoke and mirrors to cover up that chicken wire. Then another added benefit is that you can see that lovely pop of yellow with a little bit of texture that really draws you into looking at the arrangement.
11. Adding More Roses for Shape: Once I added the dahlias, which are the focal flower, and then popped in some of those strawflowers to hide the mechanics, now we can go in and fill in with some roses to create a shape. Right now it looks like a weird clump of flowers in the center with some poking out, but I'm adding in one on the top left-hand side, on my top left, that's really long. I'm adjusting it again because I didn't like where that was, but my goal is to have it coming up out at an angle on my left-hand side, just under that little vine. Immediately you can start to see it has that shape from the upper top to the bottom right on the bottom. This is just building out the structure of the arrangement. Now I'm adding in another rose on the other side of the arrangement, and this is going to add even more of a shape to the whole arrangement. You can see that I'm gradually building from the innermost layers to the outermost layers. I'm just tweaking this one rose to get it a little bit more where I want it to be without flopping over. You can see I'm putting it on the opposite side of where I put that one rose, and I'm twisting the stem to really make sure that I'm getting it in the right place, because sometimes that matrix of chicken wire can be a little tricky if it's all too tight together. I'm just rearranging the vine with the rose to get it exactly where I want. I'm just adding one more rose, and you can see that after adding a couple of roses that the roses are really doing a lot of the heavy lifting as far as creating a shape. You can start to see, just by adding those three roses, the arrangement has really started to come together and we're almost finished.
12. Adding Supporting Flowers - Ranunculus: Now, I'm pulling some of these really beautiful peach colored ranunculus, which are going to be a supporting flowers. We had our roses and dahlias as more of a focal flower and then the ranunculus are going to be smaller pops of peach to tie into the color palette. They just have a really pretty texture and shape that I'm going to emphasize and I'll show you how. I just pointed to that section in the middle where I'm going to put that ranunculus, and I'm poking it out a little higher than all the other flowers to make it stand out a little bit and then I'm going to layer in all the others. I'm choosing where I want to put them. I think I'm going to do a grouping, I just layered those two next to each other, one of them is a little bit lower and that draws more attention to the ranunculus, instead of them being all scattered about. Sometimes if you group them together, it emphasizes the peach color a little bit more. I'm just going around the whole arrangement and keeping some of the stems longer so that they pop out. The cool thing about ranunculus is that they last a really long time. If you have an arrangement in your house with ranunculus, they will last forever, sometimes up to two to three weeks. Sometimes they have really fun stems that are curved and funky and wild and u can play with those and play off of those shapes in your arrangements. Again, I'm having a plan before I put in a stem. I'm putting it up next to the arrangement where I think I want it to go and then placing it in. So you can see I placed it in, I'm just filling in the gaps if there's any holes or large spaces where I think a ranunculus could stand out, then that's where I'm going to put it. Unlike for this one, it has a curved stem and I'm going to mimic that shape by adding it into the arrangement so that it's popping out, add a little curve and playing off of that low side of the arrangement. We have that high side on the right that you can see and then the low side on the left at the moment. I'm putting in another one, and going to be coming out of the arrangement a little bit higher than the other flowers around it so that it really has a chance to stand out. That's what I really like to do with ranunculus, they are probably my top favorite flower to work with. I'm filling in some of the gaps here with some more roses. For this rose, I decided to pull out the middle petals, which you can start to see when a rose opens up really nicely. You can start to see these little seeds like the center of the rose. It looks really beautiful, like a garden rose almost, so I pulled those inner petals out so that we can see inside of the rose. I just placed see a little hole on one of the sides of the arrangement, so I placed that right in there and that gives it a nice, a bigger shape. So I'm going from building out from lower layers, to outer layers.
13. Adding Filler Flowers and the Finishing Touches: Now I'm going in with some more yarrow. So we did some for the base and now I'm going to do some for the outermost layers. These are going to basically just help me fill in the gaps. The roses really helped a lot with that because they're bigger. But to fill in some of those smaller spaces, I'm adding in this yarrow. That's going to create some more texture and also bringing in some more color. For example, this one is a little bit more red and it's going to compliment well with the pinks and the yellows, the oranges, the peaches, and everything going on. We keep it in the warm color family. You can see there's another little spot on the bottom right there next to the base. So we're going to go ahead and cover that up. Covering up also I need tape. I'm using clear tape so it's not as visible. But if you're using the green forest tape, you definitely want to cover that up. Greenery in that case is ideal for that, because it's going to have all of the leaves to flow over and cover that up. Then I'm going in up here. I see another blank spot that I'm going to fill in with the yarrow. But I'm not poking it out. I'm not making the yarrow a center focal point in any way. I'm just nestling it up next to the other flowers so that the roses, the dahlias, and the ranunculus can all shine very well. Then for the finishing touches, I noticed that, for example, this rose was a little bit too high for me. You can go ahead now when you feel like you're at a good finishing point and rearrange anything that you need to. So like I adjusted that rose. Then just turn the arrangement around and play around with it. Twists some of the flowers. This is super fine tuning everything. This is what you want to do if you're doing an event, or doing an arrangement that's going to be photographed, because truly every single detail matters. When a photographer takes a photo of your arrangement, you'll blatantly see all of the weird looking angles, or asymmetry, or holes. So you want to have a really fine eye for all of that stuff. Since I do Skillshare and I also post a lot of my work on YouTube, and my boyfriend is so amazing in photographs everything, and films everything for me. I'm really used to seeing my work be photographed. So I feel like I've developed an eye for it as I design. A really good way to do this while you design is to take a step back and look at the arrangement from a broader perspective, instead of just looking at each flower. It's good to see everything from different perspectives and broader perspectives. Like in all my other videos, I highly encourage you to take photos of your arrangement and do any last minute tweaks. By looking at photos of your arrangement, you'll see some little details that may be you couldn't see with your naked eye. That's a really good tip. Don't be afraid to get in there and touch the flowers, and move them around so that they're exactly where you want them to be. In my professional opinion, I think that the details are the most important besides maybe creating a structure in a shape of your arrangement. So really focus on the details if you want to elevate your arrangements to the next level.
14. Outro: Here we have the finished product, and I hope you all learnt some really valuable tools today that are a little bit more advanced and intermediate, like the chicken wire and designing in a compost phase as well as the layering technique that I taught you about with creating different focal points of the arrangement, high to low, from left to right, shape of the arrangement, and how to create that shape with all different kinds of flowers, you can see that the outcome is a really feminine, really beautiful, summary, warm arrangement of flowers that is really nice for a wedding and event, a centerpiece at a fine dining table, or even a styled photoshoot. Some tips for getting really nice photos and videos of your arrangement is you can also act as the stylist with the photographer if you're on a styled photoshoot, or you're doing a wedding, you can just like judge the flowers, and make sure that everything looks perfect and that they get the right angles. If you really want to make a styled shoot or if you want to do a home photoshoot with a nice camera, you can get a background like a backdrop, and I think that just gives your arrangements a really extra special look and super Instagram worthy portfolio where you can put them on your website. It just levels up everything and then obviously make sure you have really good lighting. Those are like the key things for a beautiful artful floral photoshoot. Again, my name is Melissa, and I really hope that you enjoyed today's class. Please be sure to upload any photos that you take of the arrangements that you make if you follow it along in this class and created your own arrangement at home. I would love to see what you create so post a photo, be sure to post it in the class projects section and then leave a review of this class. If you have any feedback at all, good or bad, constructive or positive, I would love to hear it, and I'm always trying to make these classes better for you so that you can learn floral design at home super easily. Also be sure to follow me on social media. I am on Instagram @pepperrosedesign, and I post a lot of my work on there, and I love seeing your work. So please DM me, tag me in any posts, and I'd love to see your floral arrangements and meet you, connect with this amazing sculpture student community out there. So be sure to say hello, I would love to hear from you and until next time, happy designing.
Melissa Thomas, Florist
