Floral Design 101: Complete Step-by-Step Flower Arrangement

1. Introduction: Hey there, I'm Colleen of Career Floral. I'm going to teach you in this course, how to create flower arrangements. Whether they're bud vases, center pieces, large scale arrangements, and then even fruit styling. I'm going to really teach you the basics and foundations of creating something really elevated in design. It doesn't really matter where you get the flowers from. And I'm going to show you some tricks of how to source them. What's important is to have fun and get experimental. And once you follow the basic principles that I'm going to teach you, this is so approachable to anybody. You're going to learn how to make this. And I know that it looks pretty intimidating. It's really big, but I promise you by the end of the course you're going to be a natural. It's a smooth flow from start to end. I'm going to teach you products that you might want to have on hand tools. How to set up a vase, where to source your flowers from, where to look for flowers, how to create a color palette. And then we're going to get into the designing portion. Once we get into the designing portion, I'm going to show you how to make a smaller centerpiece step by step with some basics. Then you're going to take that knowledge and you're going to translate it into making a large scale arrangement. Just like this. The principles are pretty much the same and it's so much fun. After I teach you how to do the designing, we're going to end our course by learning how to make a beautiful table scape, including all the principles that we learned previously. The person who's going to benefit from this is somebody who is really excited to learn, has always wanted to learn floristry, or maybe they already know a lot about floral arrangements and they want to learn a little bit more or see how another designer chooses to tackle arrangements. I hope by the end of this course that you're feeling really comfortable in your skills. Because I wanted to make sure that I'm taking floristry and making it approachable to everyone. So this course is for absolutely anyone. You don't have to have any prior skills in floral arranging or anything of the sort. It's really just for fun and it'll help you feel really competent when it comes to designing. 2. Vases and Supplies: Let's talk about all you might need to complete this course. We're going to start with vases and vessels and things to hold the flowers. Right here I have a large scale centerpiece compote. These are shallow bowls for creating smaller center pieces. This is a small scale centerpiece bowl, which are fun to put frogs in. Sometimes you can fit chicken wire in here, but these are nice for individual stems. I've got a water pitcher, and this can be used to fill vases as you go. These are bud vases. I have a tall vase for our large arrangement. Another tall vase. This is a small glass which you can put smaller stems in. Then this is a large bucket that you'll use to put all of your flowers in. I like to have about five or six of these on hand, along with about five or six of these glass cups, because it's nice to just put like one stem at a time in here. Also a lazy Susan or a turntable, which makes it so that you can see your arrangement from all angles as you're creating it. 3. Where to Get Great Vases: Sourcing, hard goods and vases is one of my favorite aspects of floristry. I chose a pretty neutral palette for today's project. And a lot of these items I've linked in the course notes so that if you're interested in any of them, they're accessible to you as well. For example, a lot of items that I will find will either be from thrift stores, home goods stores, local ceramicist, or even designers that I find on Etsy. My favorite thing to do is to track down some vase that I'm really interested in and add it to my collection. On two years ago, I was so inspired that I started to do my own ceramics. And I made all of my bud vases that I use for a lot of different projects. If that's something that interests you, there's so many different ways to go with pottery, but my favorite vessels to use are often made out of ceramics or natural materials like marble or stone. I don't often use wood just because it's so porous. But that is a rundown of where you can find these and like I said, I will be sure to link them for you so that if you want anything that's here, I'll try to source it for you. 4. Other Essential Tools: I'm going to introduce you to some mechanics, tools, and items that I use quite often. When it comes to floristry, I like to keep everything organized in a tote like this. This is actually a diaper bag. I find that it comes in really handy on jobs. It's easy to take along and it keeps all of my things together. Let's start with some mechanics. I primarily use chicken wire. Chicken wire comes in either green or silver. Depending on the project I will use either. I tend to like to use the silver more then it's really nice to keep them even after you've used them. So I'll store them in like a Tupperware or something like that. Other mechanics that you can use are frogs, which this is a metal poky plate that you would stick inside of a vessel. To use that, you need a sticky tack, which this is not a very good bag of it. But this gives you a general idea of how you would stick to this. It's almost like earthquake tack. It comes in rolls of green or white. There's that, those are your basic mechanics. And then of course you're going to want to have some wire snippers for your chicken wire. Then I have some traditional garden hears, you can get any type. I tend to go through these pretty quickly. Other things that I like to use, I always have gloves on hand, especially these Nitril ones. These keep my hands pretty clean. I find that from working with flowers for so long, I started to be really careful about touching a lot of the flowers just because of possible pesticide use or other contaminants on the flowers. Then I have these gloves, which are heavy duty and these are my favorite. I use these when I'm cutting the chicken wire to protect my hands too, otherwise you can stab yourself really easily. Let's see, what else do I have in here? Okay. I have three different types of tape and I use these for taping on top of either like I'll do a grid with these tapes or I will use these for keeping the chicken wire intact in the vessel. And I'll show you that step when we come to putting the mechanics within the vases. But this is a clear tape, This is my favorite to use, and I find it extremely waterproof. These are two waterproof, thin duct tape types in green or white. And then along with the tack that's important, that's for the frogs. And then the other things that I like to keep are you'll often get these when you get flowers from the supermarket and I keep them. They help keep the water clean and keep a nice environment for the flowers within the vase. But if you are also interested, I use this a lot of times in my buckets to keep my flowers hydrated and fresh. Especially like when I get the flowers from the grocery store, I'll snip them off, I'll put them in the bucket. And then I'll put just a very small amount of this in the bucket and I find that it is good food for the flowers. This is floral life crystal clear, and I'll link this for sure. These are all the things that you'll need for this course and they can get you by for just about anything within basic floristry. 5. Preparing Your Hard Goods: Before we get started designing, we're going to put the mechanics in the vessels. I'm going to put this large one aside and I'll show you how to do it with the small ones. First, I have my bowl and I'm going to take my gloves and put them on first because I want to protect my hands. In essence, you will take a section of chicken wire and then you will ball it up and you'll stick it within the bowl. Then after you put the chicken wire in, you take your tape and you're going to make a cross pattern over the top. I might lose the turntable because I feel like it's being a lot of movement. There's one half. Then you'll go the other across the top that secures the chicken wire in place. This is a basic way to do a mechanics within a bowl, and this is primarily what I do. I'll ball up the chicken wire. I might even save my chicken wire, but I can use it multiple times in a vase. Then from there, if I really want to add more security, I can go around the whole edge of the That just makes sure that there's no shifting with the chicken wire balled up. Chicken wire cages are so nice for holding stems and they create a really good structure and base for all kinds of flowers and really secure. However, if you want to add a little extra security, I like to use a frog for that. You can get a frog in different sizes. I'm going to use this one for this bowl because it fits really nicely down at the bottom. Then with the tack that you purchase for your frogs, you're going to take it around the edge of the frog going all the way around. I don't usually stick anything in the center and push that down with my fingers. Then I'm going to stick it in the bowl. Then pushing with the edges of my fingers to secure it. Sometimes I'll even take my scissors and just on the pokey part, you can either leave it like that for a really fun Japanese ikebana style, where you get to really see the stems and it's very minimal and you can put water in there. Or you can go above and beyond so that you really are secure with your flowers and put chicken wire on top of it. You would just do the same thing again, put tape this way and that way. Let's move on to the large scale and I'll show you about how I cut chicken wire too, putting my gloves on, because I can't tell you how many times I've stabbed myself with chicken wire. You're looking for the end. This is a really nice roll of chicken wire because it's fairly small in side to side. Sometimes they come in really, really big rolls that are about like that wide. I can get a little complicated. I'm going to just take enough where I know that I'm going to be able to get into my vase, but also have enough overlap so that there's a lot of grooves for the stems. I tend to pack my chicken wire in. Some designers like to use less. I find that the stems shift more and my preference is to have more than not. I'm going to take my wire cutters snip along. You can also use pruning shears. I wouldn't recommend it because it'll destroy your scissors really quickly. But if you have old garden shears, those work just fine. Okay. Now that you have a that's how much I'm going to use, really no real science to it. You're going to try to look at the size of your vase that you're putting it in. And I like to just smush around. There's always different ways to do this. This is just how I do it. Not sure if it's the right way or the wrong way. It's just what I've done over the years. Once I get that in there, I'm going to smash it in so that there's a little bit of a dome in the center. But that coming up too far on the edges because I don't want to have to worry about covering this base with flowers, foliage, anything. I want to be able to have the flowers get showcased and not need a bunch of filler just to cover a base. Same technique, again, with the tape, you will take a tape piece across snip it. It is also possible to use those other types of tape that I showed you earlier that are more like duct tape. My preferences is clear tape. I just find that it really holds up super well and very waterproof and then you don't see the tape on the base base. Again, I'm going to go around the edge just to make sure that it's very secure. Maybe take my hands in here and just move the chicken wire around a little bit so that I get closer to the edges of the as close as I can. Then that is how you do it. We have the large scale with chicken wire in it. We have a smaller one with chicken wire in it, and then this one has chicken wire and a frog in it for extra security. Those are the three basic techniques that I use for my mechanics within my bases. 6. Sourcing Your Flowers to Tell a Story: Before I start designing, I always start with a vision board. A place that I like to do this is on Pinterest, or I'll take magazine clippings and I'll put them on a piece of paper or in a portfolio. I take these with me when I go to purchase flowers. Because what I'm trying to do when I create a design is I'm trying to convey a feeling or an emotion. Just like a painter's palette, flowers are a wonderful way to convey meaning and emotion through their color ways. With all of my designs, I always try to pick a color palette and stick to it. It makes it really helpful when you have a vision board that you take with you to either the Farmers or the mart, or the grocery store, because you know that you'll be creating a cohesive look. With this project, I chose to go with colors that I work with a lot, which are in the apricot sunset, almost neutral way of creating a mood. And I feel like this creates a very serene atmosphere. When I went to go source these florals, I had a vision in mind that I wanted something that was going to fade from being like an apricot sunset to having little pops of yellow in it, and then a little bit of purple and some whites. I work with this palette a lot because I feel like it's really easy to work with. But it also has good depth to it. And it's not just your typical white and green. Let's talk about where you can get flowers from. There's a lot of different places that you can source flowers from, from either your backyard. Oftentimes, I'll use a lot of backyard clippings or garden clippings or talk to my neighbor if they're pruning a tree, and I might get some really great greenery that way. You can see here that these are some tomato vines. Now, this was grown by A. However, this would be something that would be really fun to play with if you have a vegetable garden going. Other places that you can source florals from are the grocery store. I have some grocery flowers that I will show how to process later. And we'll turn those into something that looks very different than what you see here. Places like Trader Joe's or Safeway often have a really good selection of flowers, and they're easy to find and easy to work with. A lot of the flowers that you see up here are flowers from local farmers. They're pretty easy to find and they often have the best, most fresh looking flowers that you can find from heirloom qualities. Also, I feel like a lot of the farmers these days are getting so savvy with what florists actually want to design with, and they're moving towards growing flowers that are in color ways that we like. So like this Flox over here I found from a local farmer and I found her through Instagram. A great way to search your local area is either to do like hashtag farmer, florist and then put your area or hashtag flower farmer and you can find a lot of different floral suppliers that way. Otherwise you could go to your farmer's market, that's another wonderful resource for flowers. And then if you're lucky and you have a flower mart near you, just check in to see what those hours are for non badge holders and that's a great way to find a lot of flowers too. I know that sounds really overwhelming. There's a lot of different places where you can source flowers from, but I want you to understand that you can create something super elevated, beautiful, luxurious from just about anything, whether you're getting the flowers from the grocery store, their clippings from your backyard. I'm going to show you some very basic principles and techniques that'll make it so that you feel really confident when it comes to putting some flower arrangements together and creating some really high end looking center pieces. 7. Caring for Your Flowers: All right. You've picked up your flowers, you've headed home, and now I'm going to show you how to process them and ensure their longevity. There's a couple different techniques that are involved in that, but it's truly not rocket science. I remember when I got started with floristry, one of the main questions I had was, does every single flower have a different way that it likes to be treated? And while some of the flowers have a little bit of a different technique for cutting them and prepping them, for the most part, you're good to go with some of the most basic principles which are cutting off the stems, giving them a good drink of water, and then making sure that maybe you're treating your water with something like the floral life or the crystals that you can get from the grocery store. Before I step into these, these are a little bit more of specialty flowers. On how I like to process them, I'm going to put them to the side and I'm going to show you how to process maybe a bunch that you got from the grocery store. Let's start with this one. These are beautiful flowers. And before I do this, I'm going to put my gloves on because I don't want to get my hands all messy. And also, I just feel like it's a good practice to get into. I've already treated this bucket here with a little bit of floral life. But let me show you how I do that. You're going to take a little bit of this, shake it up, any of out of the crystals, you don't need a whole one of these for a bit of water like this. You almost need maybe like a pinch. And then I save them and I put them in a little plastic bag for later. But I'll show you what, this, you shake it up. You need very little of this. I will take a little bit into a cap. Maybe just a couple of drops. Put it in the bucket. Don't even really need to swirl it, but I will and then swirl it around. Now I already put some in this pitcher too. And I've filled this container, which I'm going to use for putting cuttings in. All right. So this is Altra, Maria. This is just a good workhorse flour. These last for weeks. Sometimes I've had them last even up to 23 weeks, but you're definitely guaranteed to get a good long run out of this flower. And what I like to do when I get it home is I take it out of the plastic. They give you one of these. I save it and I will leave the plastic on my surface. That way the cuttings that I'm putting I'm just going to put straight into the plastic and bunch it up and toss it if you're composting the greenery. Easy to also separate out that I'll take the whole bunch altogether if I'm just quickly trying to drop it into a bucket. And then you're going to give it a good cut at a sharp angle. I'm cutting it a little than say right here because I know how tall my bucket is and I don't need this much length on my stem. Something else that I like to do with the ultra Maria before I'll put her in the bucket if I have time is I'm not a big greenery person. And as you can tell, this greenery looks a little shot. I'm just going to come in and I'm going to pluck it with my fingers. Get that over there. Then sometimes if I'm doing an arrangement, I might pluck off all of them or I might save some. I will go through and do that with every single stem just so that it's ready to go When I am ready to start designing with it. Right now though, because we're going to move on to the next one. I'm just going to take these and put them into that bucket. Like I said, this is super easy to separate. I might take the greeneries and I might put it into one compost bucket, and then I'll put the plastic in the other. I'm going to keep the plastic down and then just move on to my next. Okay. I got these at the grocery store this week, which is amazing. That is a seasonal flower. This is a dahlia. These are really easy to find at farmers markets. They're great and easy to grow in California if you're in some of the different areas. I know that they can be a little bit trickier to find. We're fortunate over here in California though, they grow kind of like a weed, so Okay. She's not somebody that I even want to bring to my party, so I'm going to just go ahead and discard that one. And that's a good note, actually, is that when you're picking out flowers, you can kind of take a look in the plastic and take a look at how many heads you're getting, and then kind of compare it to how many stems you have. So if I was to have taken more time on this, I would have noticed that I have 12344 heads, but I actually have five stems, so I sort of got cheated. All right. So I'm going to carefully separate this because I don't work with a lot of greenery. My tendency is to always take off even these side stems. I know some people like to work with them. If it's something that sounds fun to you, keep them on. If it's something that you don't want, take them off. Sometimes if I have little bud vases, I might keep these little guys for that. And I'll put them over here into like a little container like that. But I'm going to process her all the way down to that point. If I was just bringing these home from the grocery store and I knew I wasn't going to be working with them for a couple days, I would leave on more greenery. Like this and just give it a good cut on the bottom because that'll allow her to drink, but it's not going to create too many cut points. I know I'm going to be designing with this very soon. I'm going ahead and taking off the greenery because I know that I'm going to want it off once I start designing. And it's hard to do using two hands to be able to cut greenery and put it in the base. I just want it to be where I want it to be. That's that. We'll just go ahead and give these guys a good cut at the bottom flying bud. Okay. The last one that I got from the grocery store, I think it's a really cool idea to show you all. This is a mixed bouquet. And the reason why I pick this is because if you're short on time or you don't want to go and source a bunch of different flowers, or maybe you only have one centerpiece to make getting a pre made bouquet for. I think this was $12 This allows you a lot of different ingredients in here. I mean, we've got greenery, we have some focal flowers, we have a little bit of color, and then say I had some really neat yard clippings, or maybe I had a couple of Dlllias that I had gotten from somebody. I can mix those together and make something really special. Let's see here. Here's a good example. Here's a rose. What I like to do with roses is I give them a good snip at the bottom. I'll probably take off more of this greenery when it comes time to working with the flowers. So I'll go ahead and show you that now. If I was waiting, I would wait to take these off, but I'm going to go ahead and take them off. Then also, these are called guard petals. If you look around the edge, you'll see that there's a lot of time on a rose. They'll be petals that are a little bit chopped up, chewed up, or maybe they look a little bit greener than the rest of the petals. You're just going to go ahead and pop those off. Then a couple of different techniques with a rose. You can turn her upside down and give her a little twist that'll open the rose up a little bit. You can go up here and blow air into it. And it'll open up a little more too, then something that we like to do in floristry that makes it have a very modern look, is reflexing the petals. You're going to take a petal and you can push your thumb and push it back. I might go and do that all the way around the rose, either one row of petals, or I might do two, depending on what type I'm working with. Take a look and see. Yeah, there's that that's a rose. This one. I'm going to go ahead and take off most of this greenery. I don't need it, it's unnecessary. Give it a good snip at the bottom and plug it into the water for the rest of that. This is all pretty straightforward, but the basic thing that you always want to remember is to try to get any greenery that's on the area where the stem is going to be in water of. The reason for that is that you'll keep your water a lot cleaner that way It'll make it so that the flowers can drink properly and it will keep it so that they're not getting each other infected with bacteria. Keeps the water from stinking a lot. It's a good practice to get as much greenery off the stem. In the water section as you can. You can see I've got my stems in there, there's not any greenery. And that's how I want to do that. I'm going to put these aside and then move on to some specialty flowers. Okay, this is a Lazanthus. This is a flower that I like to work with a lot. And you'll see a Lazanthus sometimes at the grocery stores. Oftentimes you can get them at either a floral market, or I was lucky enough to have a local farmer grow. And this is how I picked them up. When I'm working with these flowers, I like to use them as a focal flower and they're really great splash of color. They're absolutely one of the most versatile flowers that there are. But they come to you like this and I personally don't prefer to use these. I like the flower to be just this. And if I'm going to use these, they'll be in a little bit larger of a state, which it doesn't look like there's a good example on here, but this one is a little bit bigger. I might keep that, but for the most part, I'm going to go along the stem and I'm going to start clipping off anywhere where I see a side shoot. And then cleaning off the leaves again up here. Make sure to look, because sometimes I'll accidentally snip the head off and then that's a bummer. Okay. And then I like to pick off my leaves rather than using my snips all the time. Okay. That's how that would look. I'm going to give her a nice little clean cut. Now that I've cleared the stem of any of the leaves and side shoots, I'm going to turn her upside down and spin. This will open up the flower a little bit more. Sometimes people will take their fingers and push a little bit. Flowers are a lot less delicate than I think people think they can take a fair amount of, I think we call it like reflexing. That is what I'll do with that one. I'll show you an example of another one. Here's another one. Looks like a little petals falling off. All right, so give her a snip at the bottom. This one has a massive side shoot going to take that off. Also going to take off this one. Turn upside down, give a little spin. And I'll keep processing a Lazanthus through the whole bunch because they're a little bit sensitive in that they can snap, their stems can snap when you're working with them. So I like to go ahead and make sure that I get all of this off ahead of time. That way when I'm plugging in, it's just the flour and it's ready, so I don't have to be using my hands to try to take off stems while I'm doing it. All right. Next we have a couple of flowers that I like to use as focals but also bass. As you can see in the water. There's some greenery on here. This is yarrow in such a beautiful shade. This one isn't too bad. I'm going to give it a fresh snip. Any of these little guys, I'll take my fingers and pick them off. But I don't mind the greenery on Yarrow as much. I love the way that it has a little bit of a apricot to yellow and green hue into it. I think that's really fun and I feel like it plays well with of the other colors in the flowers. Do another one, right here, here's some brown. Here's another method is if it's like a soft enough little stem, you can just take your hand and squeeze it down, as I would say. Okay. And then the so I've already processed these ones. When you get a slosia', get it with a lot of amaranth varieties too, like love lies, bleeding, they'll have a lot of greenery on it. The leaves super easy, just pluck them off and then you have the focal point. And then you don't have a lot of leaf that you're having to deal with, and I already processed these ones. So you can see, oh, here's a couple more. I did snip most of the bottoms of these, but I'm going to go ahead and do that again. Sharp angle snip place, those are some basics in processing flowers. Let me think if there's any other ones that have special techniques. Okay. Poppies, poppies, or Icelandic poppies or anything of that variety can be a little bit sensitive. They like to have their bottom snipped and then you take a lighter and you score the bottom of the stem. I don't have any examples to show you, because poppies right now aren't in season, but you would take a lighter and just until you hear a little singe and you'll see the little dark ring on the bottom of the stem, then they're good to put in water. Another flower that is important to take care of properly is a ranunculus. Ranunculuses are often available at the grocery stores. They're beautiful, they're worth looking up. They're flower I use all of the time. People often will make a mistake of putting ranunculus in water that's filled up all the way. A ranunculus prefers to have a little bit of water that it can drink, and then you have to keep filling it and keeping an eye on the water. If you give a ranunculus too much water, it'll absorb all of the water that you've given it, and then the top of the stem will just like wilt over. That's a problem because you want your stem to be really strong. There's ways to avoid if you do get a weak stem that I can show you, but it's important to take care of those up front. Other than that, if you do these basic principles of snipping at an angle, making sure the water is clean and fresh with a little bit of maybe solution in it. You should be good to go and your flowers will last and look healthy. Changing the water frequently in the vase is important, but for the most part, they're really hardy. They don't need as much tender care as I think a lot of people think that they do. 8. Small-Scale: Intro: All right. In front of me, you see a centerpiece completed. This is what we're going to make together. I'm going to tell you how to create this for yourself. And what I want you to remember is that be gentle with yourself. The first time that I made a centerpiece, it looked different, but I was super pleased with it. As you go and as you're learning, you're going to get the hang of it and you're going to have some tricks of the trade that you'll start to get to know and flowers that you like to work with, better places that you like the flowers better within the arrangement. And so just make sure to be gentle to yourself because just like no two people are just alike, neither are any center pieces. You're all going to make something that looks different and unique. And one of my favorite things to do is to see how my students are making arrangements and how they put the flowers together. So please, if you feel like it, share your progress, share your final product. You can find me on Instagram at at Career Floral. You can tag me with hashtag, Career Floral, or you can upload some of your photos into this course here and on this platform. We all would love to see what you're making. And I know for me personally, I adore seeing what my students make. So please if you feel like it, share before we jump in and make this, I'm going to give you a little general lay of the land. What you're seeing here is a finished product, but what we're going to do is we're going to break it down to you in a few different steps. The first will be taking your vessel that you have, your centerpiece, your bowl, your vase that's been filled with the mechanics and we're going to cover the base with flowers. I'm going to teach you which type of flowers are the best to use for this, and this creates a really nice backdrop for the rest of the arrangement. It also covers mechanics. The next we're going to do is we're going to come in with focal flowers. These are things like your Dahlias, your echinacea. I have some lasanthus on this other side. These are the ones that draw your eye into the arrangement and they really create like foundational support for everything else in it as well. After we put the focal flowers in, we'll come in with these more delicate pieces. Pieces like the cosmos over here or the corn cockles. These are the items that add the movement and add a little bit of whimsy and play to the arrangement. After you've got all those in there, we'll go back, we'll take a final look. Add any more pieces where we need to plug something in. If we see any spots where there's missing flowers or spots where you can see the mechanics after you've plugged all the flowers in and you feel like you love your final product. This is the finished look. You're going to be able to have a beautiful centerpiece to place on your bedside table maybe for a dinner party wherever you would like. But I hope that you will share your progress along the way with us and enjoy the journey. 9. Small-Scale: Base and Mechanics: Okay, now that you understand sourcing. Picking a vision going with a design idea, we're going to go ahead and get started and make our first centerpiece. I chose the low bowl and I chose the one that has the frog in it. It's not important if you have the frog or not. I just figured that I would use both. So that you could see that this is a good amount of chicken wire. You don't need the frog. The stems will hold really well in this. So from here I've already prepped my vase. I'm going to fill it with water, and I'm going to fill almost all the way to the top. This is because it's such a shallow bowl that the flowers are going to drink a lot of water over time. And so you're going to need to keep making sure to check the water levels. Handy thing to have on the day of the dinner party or wherever you have these centerpieces is to have a little watering jug so that you're sure to keep filling it throughout the day because you will be surprised at how much water they drink. So I'm going to put my gloves on and a special trick that I have started doing is I take a oil based or a coconut or a lotion sha, butter something really rich for my hands and I'll put it all over my hands before I put my gloves on. And then when I take them off, they're baby soft and it's kind of like a fun little spa treatment for your hands. A really good practice to get in the habit of wearing gloves. And these ones are thin enough that you can really use your fingers well and they don't get in the way. The first step of any centerpiece is covering your base. That is covering your mechanics, making sure that you have your base layer down. And then from there we're going to build out. I just have a couple of flowers up here. Right now, I don't have my spread of flowers because what I'm going to do is start with the bases, So you can see I have yarrow and then I have flock. I'm going to fade from putting the yarrow over first and then maybe having one small section with the flox in it, reaching out a little bit more. Other plants that are really good for this are things like greenery really works well. I choose not to use greenery and I find plants that have mult stem for covering my base status is a really great option. Baby's breath would be a great option. Other flowers that are great are things like stalk or lilac, something that has a little bit of drape to it. Because basically what you're trying to do is just get a good coverage before you begin designing. On top of that, I'm going to start with the yarrow going to go in low because this has so many different stems. I'm going to go ahead and snip off the side shoots because I'm going to use all of it. You'll begin by plugging in pieces all over the base. This is, as you can see, very low and very close to the chicken wire. It's good to have some that are a little bit taller, so I might that one up a little bit higher. And this is not something that takes a lot of design forward energy. You're just basically getting that base covered and your edges. So over here I had like a pretty large piece, so I'm going to have that cover the edge. That way I know part of my vase isn't showing regardless of the size of your vase. If it's a bowl type or compote, the same principle applies and you'll do this same idea of covering your base for everything. One of the reasons why I like to use stock and yarrow is because I can get away with using two stems. And I'll basically have my entire base covered. Which means that later when I go to build out the design, I don't have to focus so much on covering whatever the mechanics are. I can focus more on having flowers get to stand alone and show off, as opposed to being worried about, ooh, you know, I can see that chicken wire over there. And as you can see, this is just two stems and it's already doing such a good job of covering. You can even break down some of these bigger ones and just plug them in. I can see I've got some coming out, got some tucked in low, got one in the middle there. One of the things. I always try to do, and it's important for the design of the floral arrangements that I'm teaching, is that keep your center low. You wouldn't want to stick something like this per se right in the middle, coming out tall. And I'll show you why later. But basically we're going to build something that has like a mountain with a valley to another mountain. Making sure that this is really low is important. In fact, I feel like this one's a little too high and I'm going to cut it down just a little bit. All right. Now that I've got the base pretty much covered, I'm going to come in with a few pieces of Flox. I adore this flower. It lasts such a long time and I love to keep the greenery on it. It's one of the few flowers that I actually will keep the greenery on. I might take that leaf off, I might not just because it's delicate and it has such good movement. So I'm going to choose one side to put some on. I love the way that this one has such beautiful movement. I might have this one going a little bit above. The good news is that I can cut it down later if I want it to be tucked in a little deeper. I'm going to spin this round to look at it, then I will turn it back around for you. But I took a spot where I saw a hole. I'm just tucking it in between the yarrow. This one I'm going to keep nice and low, the colors they play off of each other really well. This also can be done with something different. Like you can use two tones of white. You can use just about any color combination. But this will create a really nice, just clean looking coverage that will also add a depth and uniqueness. Okay, whatever I do here, I've got the front already started. I'm going to just put one over here also. And this one I'm going to really need to tuck in. The reason why I'm doing that is because I see a little hole right here. It probably won't be important in the long run, but I just like the way that that adds dimension. Okay, that's a great start. From here, we're going to move on to building out the arrangement, but that's a basic way to get good coverage over the base. Makes it so that from here you have a great starting point to build off of. And you're not focused on covering the mechanics or adding in later. 10. Small-Scale: Focal Flowers and Volume: All right, now that you've got your vessel covered, you've got your base layer down, we're going to work on adding in the focus of your arrangements. These are the focal flowers. As I mentioned in previous module, focal flowers can be things that are either they're big or they are petal rich, they're a pop of color, they have a lot of structure. Something that I like to use a lot is either a dahlia or a lizanthus. For this, I'll talk you through the supplies that I have here today. But other types of focal flowers could be things like roses that has a lot of structure to it. I've got some Dahlias, this is Echinacea, this is Lizanthus. They're both double varieties, but Lizanthus also comes in a single petal variety. And that type is equally great for a focal, I have some slosia, xenia's, and some cosmos. As I look at this, I'm going to bring in that principle that I was talking about earlier where we're going to start to build out from the center. And we're making sure to always keep the middle of our arrangement clear. What I like to do is I like to work off of the sides. I have so many different focal flowers that I'm going to work in, usually an odd number. I think what I'm going to do is start with my Dahlias and plug those in and I'll show you how I do that. And then I might add some solosia as well. Actually, I'm changing my mind. I'm going to start with the Solosia. The reason why is that it can also be used as a base and it's just going to kind of get tucked in here and maybe add a little dimension and a little bit of depth. I see a pretty big hole over here and I'm going to take, it's a really pretty one. I like this one because it has some color in it. And you'll see what I'm doing is I'm basically taking it and I'm placing it along before I cut the stem off, along the arrangement to see like maybe there's a yarrow where it's going to pick up a little more of that pink than if I was to put it next to a different yarrow. And that is how I like to play with color. And that is one of the most beautiful aspects of floristry in general, is the fact that there's so much color just in even a single flower, just alone in this. I'm seeing yellow, I'm seeing green, I'm seeing pink. There's even this polescent hue coming off of it, which I don't know if you can see on the camera that's picking up. Just like the tiniest bit of violet or purple. Okay, I've got my height here. I know I want a little bit there and I know I want a little bit there. So I'm just trying to decide where I want to put the pink that it's going to make the biggest impact because this is my clear front. I'll cut the stem down pretty severely. It's a really special flower, that's why I'm taking so much time on it, I normally wouldn't, but I want it to be special. All right. So I put it over here and I think I'm going to take another smaller one and put it in the front. But I love how this is giving it sort of like a CN enemy vibe. I almost feel like this is acting a little bit more like a base than a focal flower. But you'll see when the arrangement is finished that it will have kind of like a focal effect. I like that. So you can kind of see what I'm looking at is I'm kind of seeing like we've got out something here, what's going in here and here. But I also know that I'm going to want to build my Dahlias off of there. I think I'm going to take it out and I might put it in later. Okay, so let's start with the As. I'm going to take two of them, right? Here's where I'm going to start to build out my depth. One of the tricks that I use often and maybe what I'll do is I'll come around to the front, that's helpful. Okay, so we've got this height here. I'd like to place this so that way it's tucked in. And then the next one. I'm going to have coming out much further and I'm going to switch back to the other side here, and then I'll turn it around for you. But basically before I do that, I want to explain why I'm doing that when we look at an arrangement there that we can get it to come out at you. This is not only for photography, it's also a way of catching your eye. You'll get a better effect with your arrangement than if everything's plugged in all at the same level. This gives it a really gardening effect and it adds depth and movement to the bouquets. So I took this one out because I'm seeing, now when I get closer, I'm going to, I'm going to tuck it even further in. I mean, that is a short stem. Don't be afraid to make your stem short. All right. So what I'm doing right now is I'm playing with where I have it placed. As you can see, it's like this. But what I'm a little concerned about right now is that there is this channel through the center that I like to keep pretty clear. So that way it has an effect over here and has an effect over here. So I may move this to the side a little bit if you're really tall like me or even if you want to have a better perspective. Sometimes it's nice to put your arrangement on a bucket that way you can see it up towards your face. Because what we're looking at is we're trying to make an arrangement that will look good when you're sitting at a table. That's why these low ones are so beautiful. Is that the low and cascading. But when you're at a table, I'm not sitting at a table up here, I'm sitting at it down here. When I put it on a bucket, it's elevated so that you can see what the guests might be looking at or whoever's eating at the table will be looking at. Okay, so there is that I like to work in threes, so I'm going to experiment with what that would look like, adding a third Dolia in probably right around here. I've got one that's coming out, I've got one that's tucked in now. I could either go two directions. I could have one that's really coming out at you like that, or I could have one that's tucked down low to the side. I think for this I'm going to have it coming out at that direction. I always like to think of it as a trumpet. Okay. I've got that side with the focal flowers now. I'm going to go onto the other side of the arrangement, back here and put some focal flowers here, and some here. I'm also going to come back in and probably put more focal flowers over here. I'm going to test, do I want echinacea or do I want to use the Lazanthus thing? Is this thing? I talked to myself a lot while I'm doing this, Pardon me. Okay, I'm going to use these bright pink ones as the focal on the other side. Again, same principle. I'm going to have a group of three on the other side. So you can see I place that one kind of like that and you don't have to worry about these stems. We're going to come in with so many other really fun flowers and sort of delicately get them to integrate within the arrangement. Lazanthus often, I like to do a pretty big grouping of them. I'm actually going to take that one out. Checking my work as I go and I'm going to decide if I want, I'm going to show you what I'm doing so far. So over here you can see that this is coming at the camera. The problem, however, is that these two are in the exact same plane of field, so there's no depth here. They're both on the exact same line. I can see that when I turned it, so I'm going to go back and shift something. I'm just not liking the way that that is. That might just keep it in three. I can always go back and add more later. So you'll see we've got basically the focal over here, now we have a focal over here, because these are round vessels. I'm going to work with two sides, but I'm also going to be very mindful of these sides as well because there may be guests sitting on the side. You can make it totally round. I tend to make mine more of a rectangle in shape, but then have some highlights on the sides. Okay. I'm going to go back to my A section, start in with some Eucalyptus or this is not Eucalyptus. Just kidding. I'm going to start with some echinacea. Same thing. I'm playing with depth here. I'm having some going in and some coming out. You can see I'm starting there making sure that this one's not on the exact same plane as this one. We've got a little step down. I'm going to take off all the greenery on this, okay? So I've got two here. I'm going to decide if I want to add a third or not. And I'm kind of seeing a little spot here that could be kind of fun. Something that's a cool idea to think about when you're making an arrangement is that you always want to make sure that everybody has a little bit of space. And I've heard some of the designers that I work with talk about having a butterfly be able to fly through. So if you're a sweet little butterfly, you want to be able to fly around and hop into flower to flower, and you don't want to have it be too crowded. We're giving everything the proper space. I think what I want to do is, because I love the way that these petals are flowing downwards, I want to highlight those as opposed to aiming it this way like I've done with the other ones. Okay, So those are tucked in. Now over here, I'm going to work on the back side and I think I'm going to add some more echinacea. I may just add one, and I'm seeing a good place now for the Sosa to cover this. Gap. So I'm gonna go ahead and stick that in soon. We kind of see where it did look. All right. I'm working on the echinacea. You can see how this one, I had it aiming upwards. So we've got 123123. I did take an echinacea and I put it on the back side of the arrangement. I'm sticking with just one now. I'm not committed to it, but I feel like that is almost enough. I don't want to overwhelm the eye because it's time for me to start working on the back side. I'm going to pick another focal flower to get going with over here. That one might be. I think I'm going to do a little Cosmo moment. Cosmo is really fun because it can be a focal flower. It can also have a lot of movement. And add some height and a little bit of what we call armature or architecture to it. So I've got this height with this Flox over here. I'm going to add a little bit of that height over on this side. I'm going to go in between this Solosa that is here without making too much more on happened up front. Okay. So I'll show you as I go placed one in and that one I can tell in the front is totally dead, snipping it. Take out another little guy and place that one in a little deeper. We're toppling over. A lot of this is playing around. Sometimes I will just simply snip a stem and go, okay, well now I have to work with that height, Where am I going to put that? I think I'm being a little more careful than I usually would because my process is usually to snip a stem, see where it works, plug it in, it doesn't work, move it around. But I want to make sure that I'm explaining things as I go here. Okay, we have a little bit of drape over here now. I'm going to come in with some Z. This is where I'll pick one out. I've got two colors here, really beautiful. I've smaller P and then ones that are a little more apricot. What I want to do is play with the echinacea and also play with the dahlia. Try not to take away from it. I feel like this site is just so good. I don't even think I want to add any more focal flowers. I'm going to add some more focal flowers on this side. What I'm looking at here is that in the middle of this Losanthus, do you see that little bit of yellow there in the middle of the losanthus? I'm going to try to play off of this with the color in the echinacea. And that because I have a lsanthus that's pink on that side, I can either have two choices. I can either go in and have a little bit of pink mixed with a pink, or I can choose to echo the pink over into the other corner, which is exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to take this pink and I'm going to echo that lsanthus over here, which is also picking up off of that. Keep calling it eucoyptus, it's echinacea, but I'm going to play off of that, Put the orange back in favor of some more pink. I love to cluster the zinnias, they're so fun to make look like they're little patches. And I think that's what I tend to do with my floral arrangements in general is I like to make it look like a patch of a single variety of a flower growing right here. We have the Dahlia patch right here. We have the Echinacea patch. I've got the Lazanthus and the cosmos. But together they're making an arrangement. Rather than putting something all over the place, I'm grouping. Okay, As you can see now I have the grouping of the Zia. I'm going to try to see where I'm going to place these more orange toned ones. And I may not put them in at all. So that's the other option too. As I might come back later and add those because we have a lot of really beautiful flowers to add in, I might hold off. Okay. The other item that I have is this beautiful brown kind of apricot sunset Sanths as well. If I'm going to put her in, where am I going to put her? I'm just going to cut short one just to pull with that color. Let's see if there's anywhere that I want to put. I don't think so. I think I've put the amount of focal flowers that I want in for now. In the final step that I'll talk about after we do the next step, there is the opportunity to come back and add more. But for now, I feel like this is a really great start and I want to start adding some movement into the arrangement and filling in some ******. 11. Small-Scale: Delicate Flowers and Dimension: Now that we've got our focal flowers in, we're going to go in and add some delicate and dimensional flowers. Flowers for this can be anything from scabiosas, maybe even zinias can be used for them if they're tall enough. But things I like to think about for these flowers are things that are delicate stemmed, they have a lot of movement. They can dance above the arrangement. They can also drape down, basically anything that's going to add some really delicate dimension and depth to your arrangement without being like a punch, like a dahlia over here. I've got Clematis. Fine. I've got some petunias. I've got some of these which I cannot remember the names, but I will add to the course notes some fiber optic grass. A little bit of fever, few and then I brought back in the cosmos again. Because I really love the way that cosmos play in arrangements. I'm taking a look here. I think what I'm going to do first so that I can show you some draping, is I'm going to add in some vine moments. I know I was noticing that this end of the arrangement could use something trailing down. The reason why is because we've got the height over here, we've got the valley, we've got more movement and focals here. I want to have it flow outward. I'm going to add some petunias for that. There's a lot of purple in these Dahlias. I'm going to hold off on using the clematis on this side, and I'll tell you why in a little bit. But basically because I'll pull the purple over here and I'm going to use some other purple over here piece that has some really good movement. Might be out of the frame here, but one of these ones that I'm seeing here has a fair amount of drape to it. One of the things that's really cool about these low base center pieces is that you can have flowers that will drape all the way down and they may even touch the table. Okay? So this guy is clearly not going to work because, okay, and I'll explain why I wanted to drape here, but I don't want it to be such a sharp angle. And as you can see, like once I cut that stem down, it's such a sharp angle, that looks so silly. It would be better if I wanted to, but I don't think I do. It would be better if it was over here, because then it would be facing outward and having a little bit more of a dance to it. But yeah, that's not going to work there. I'm going to move on to another piece. This is all part of that trial and error with the stems. It's also pretty tricky to be doing it in filming. So you'll have an easier time when you're doing this because you'll just have your products looking straight at you. These really made a choice about which direction that they wanted to go. They decided with their movement of their clear choice. All right, I'm going to show you what I'm doing here. I'm building this out. It's going to look like it's sticking out pretty far. It may take it down a little bit or I might choose to make this side much larger. So I'm going to leave it for now because I think I'm going to want to do that is add some more movement here. Coming in and blending the area with the dahlia, with this petunia. These are incredible. These were grown by a wonderful floral farmer in the area. You'll notice that the stems are really long. A lot of the times the petunias that you'll get a nurses have much shorter stems. But this is apparently an heirloom variety and this is what they are traditionally like and they smell divine. Never seen them like this. Another flower that looks similar to this is Nicotenia. I'm not the best, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, with all of the technical or Latin names for things, a lot of people are really into that and it's a super fun part of florals and horticulture in general. I have never really gotten that into it. I've always just been like, oh, that's, it's a cone flower. Pardon me if I don't know the technical terms. All right. So I've built this out. You can see that we've got that vines done. Let's put in some clematis. I love this stuff. It's so fun and purple. Tons of greenery on this. I, we'll sometimes keep the greenery on for certain things. If there is arrangements that have a lot of greenery in it, I'll keep it on. I know you can tell right now there's not a lot of greenery in here. I don't use a lot of it. So I'm going to take off probably all of the greenery on this, even even the little leaves by guys, I like to make arrangements that are forward and have a lot of color be the focus, and less focus be on the greenery. Unless I'm choosing to make an arrangement that is mostly greenery or green white. And then I'll keep it, but there you can see the clear difference. Here, we're going to really be focusing on the flower itself. All right, on this back side, we've got the focal over here. And then I have the cosmos. I'm going to blend in the purple in with the cosmos. Same creating the draping effect over here, but a little shorter. Because I want to make sure that these do not get interrupted the petunia. Okay, I've got another one, and I know I said I take off all the greenery. I am playing with it a little bit right now just to see if I might like this greenery. I feel like it's so cute. It's got the little buds in there too. We'll see and see if she stays or if she goes, oh, she's getting to stay. Okay. So there I've got Michael Mattis section going. I want to go here. I'm going to add these very last because of how small they are. They're just so perfect and delicate. I don't want to interrupt anything right now. All right. Grass, Something I love about fiber optic grass is that in person I know it's hard to see on the camera, It is so soft. It's similar to a smoke bush in that it creates a little C and it really adds a lot of texture. I'm going to go in with this area here and see if I feel like I want to add it there. The other place that it could go is right here next to this Flox tucked in. But I don't want to interrupt the valley too much here. You don't need a whole lot of it. Okay, so I put a little bit of that in. I'm going to add some more height right here with some more cosmos. As I hope you're starting to understand that a lot of what this is is starting out with the basics, but then you're just layering, You're adding a little bit over here, you're adding a little bit over here, you're moving it around. And you're really layering it and getting a really fun look where things have their individual ******, but it all starts to look really like something that was meant to be together. See, have to turn that around. I'm adding this in because it's going to bounce off of the white of that petunia. I've added some height there with the cosmos. I think I'm going to add another one. Right there got tucked in. And I actually changed my mind because I don't want to interrupt the head of the echinacea. So you can see that's pretty upright. I put that stem almost reaching straight up. It's off to a little bit of an angle, but don't be afraid, especially with these delicate ones, to add some serious height. I love seeing an arrangement where there's somebody coming out above the crowd. All right? I've got a couple of different products left that I may or may not use. I'm going to pull the fever fuel and just check a feeling I'm not going to use it. But we're going to look anyway, taking off all the leaves of the fever. Definitely. I'm going to show you why I wouldn't use this. On this side, we have the most beautiful colors going on right now of the purple with that butter, cream, yellow, that's bouncing off of the Flox. It's also bouncing off of the echinacea. This flower right here, gorgeous. Love her. She even goes a little bit with the cosmo, but even still, I can tell that there's a real difference within that color of yellow. And it interrupts the colors that are happening here. I'm not going to use it on the side, doesn't mean I can't use it on the other side though. Let's check in over here. All right, So I'm taking a look right now to see if it's going to look cute with the clematis. I just don't really like it in here. I think I'd rather flush it out with some more cosmos rather than add any of that. We're going to just put that to the side, grab another little cosmos and add a few more in here with the clematis there. Okay, Now I'm going to start going in. I want to say that these are called corn cockles. I'll definitely be letting you know what they are officially, but for now we'll call them adorable little pink flowers. And purple is obviously, I think this is my clear front. I'm really enjoying this side, so I want to make sure that I'm using the right pieces for that. And it seems like I go back to that spot every time to start, I'm going to pull out some of these smaller purples which really similar color to the clematis. A little more delicate though and not as focally. And that's why I think that they're going to go really well with this Dahlia on the other side. Okay. Because I have this butter cream happening over here. Seems like I have faded it to being with the purple and the pink over here. I'm going to go ahead and place this over here towards the Dolla side. And I'm going to do the same thing that I did with the Cosmo on the other side. I'm going to just place it very upright, intrusively. Everyone else is going out a little bit and I just want somebody to take a stand here in this arrangement. Oh, I love these. Oh my gosh. Okay. So just two of those already. You can see it's really bringing that purple. And I might tech one in deeper. I'm holding back a little bit because I want to make sure to finish it off and then we'll come back at the very end. And I call it the final touch. And that's where we can add a little bit more here. A little bit more there. I really want people to notice this color. So I don't want to add too much to the point of where your focus gets taken away from it because there's just so much to look at, but okay, fire that one. All right, I add it a little bit right there. All right, on this other side, let's try playing with some of this pink, right? Okay, I have two options. I can either soften the Lzanthus or I can go in with zines. This Lzanthus really is going to need something in here to soften it. I'm not sure quite yet what it's going to be, whether I'm going to go a little bit more with the cosmos so I can bring another thing of Flox in and add it later. I just need to make a decision right now as to where I'm going to put these. I think I'm going to go in with zinias over here. Same thing as over here. Just kind of putting some really fun, extra delicate moments in there. I'm trying to get the right height here and the right spot. I've got a pretty big, so just kind of blocking the edge of the rangement. That looks nice here. I'll show you breaking up that little spot here. Don't be afraid to keep things longer than the rest of the arrangement to at this point is really the further that you can go out forwards and upwards, the more depth that's going to bring in. And it's going to really be fun to look at on a table. I'm not placing it here. I keep thinking I want to put something here. But every time I do that, it just looks like I just threw some flowers in by grouping it lower and really letting this be a channel I think is the right move. Otherwise, I feel like it's like you're taking a blank piece of paper and just sticking a flower in front of it. It doesn't feel like it belongs in that spot, honestly. It's a bit of a focal flower. It's not super delicate. I feel like it can actually get away with. I think I try to decide if I want to do two or if I want to put three in there. I'll show you what I'm doing. There's it without it placing it there to see. Okay, if I tucked it in really close to the base, does that add something or does it create too much of a color block and interrupt the Zenia and the echinacea. Another trick that you can do for that is making it so that the face of the flower isn't coming straight at you. It can be going the other way or even better is that I will can use a bud that has just like a little bit of the flower in it, but is mostly Trista bud. I think that's actually what do I get a little bit of movement there, but yeah, that was it. Okay. That extended that out to the side. All right. I have this petunia spot, but I think what I'm going to do instead is add in some flock over here. This is looking pretty good for this portion of adding the delicates. Then now I'm going to go back to the final step, which is taking a look, making sure there's no dead spots. Making sure that there's no empty spots. Making sure that everybody's in water, tucking in and checking out the balance of the arrangement as a whole, and plugging in more flowers as needed. 12. Small-Scale: Final Touches: All right, we've covered our base, we've added our focal flowers, we've added the delicate touches. Now it's time to go back into the arrangement. Check for any holes where you can see chicken wire. See if there's any dead leaves, any dead flower heads. Just overall finish off the piece. Right off the bat, I'm looking up and into my centerpiece, which you can't necessarily see from the camera, but I can see a couple spots where there's some chicken wire showing. I brought back the original base coverage flowers. I didn't feel like I needed to add any more focal flowers, so I didn't bring any. But you certainly could plug in more here if you felt like you needed to. I'm going to take this Solosia. You'll see right here. I'm going to add it in. I know this seems wrong, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to split it. I don't need that much. Cut it down. I thought I wanted it to kind of come up a little bit more but actually changed my mind. I want it really nice and deep. Oh, that's perfect. Okay. That totally covered the chicken wire that I could see. I don't see any spots where I need to add more yarrow. I did see over here on this side, there's a little bit of a hole in where the petunias are, so I'm going to flush that out with another petunia. Okay. And in there, while I'm in that location, I'm going to add some flocks. Perhaps I'm really getting down low so that I can see what it looks like down where I'm seeing a little bit of a gap. Do I want that there? No, I don't. Okay. Sometimes you'll get the back side of things too if you add it where you're seeing spots on the other side. So I'm going to take some, put some in with the clematis. I was no sing, I wanted to add a little of the flock there. And hopefully from the front side you'll kind of get a little bit of the effect of it mixing in. Okay, you can see I softened up this edge over here. Now I want to figure out how to soften up these lsanthus. It might be just as easy as adding even just one little section of flox. That one has too much pink in it, which is gorgeous. But it's not going to work with the lysanthus. It's too similar color wise. I really want to see if I can find a real butter, creamy colored one. Yeah, like that. Had a little bit of contrast. Okay, so I've added a little bit more dimension, you can see made it growing out a little more to the sides. Now I'm going to add a few more cosmos coming out over here, snipping off the dead pieces. Let's strike that. Awesome. Maybe one more, maybe not. I'm going to check out the fiber optic grass too to see if I can bring it onto this other side, even if it's just a very small section of it. Oh, see if I can. So I'm moving flowers out of the way to make room to make sure that these are getting down into the water in the added little bit of action there. All right. One of my Lazanthas shifted, and that was actually why it was looking kind of funny. So I'm going to fix that. All right. I'll show you what I'm seeing here, the focal flower. There's a little spot down here that I'm seeing. A little bit of a space missing or a space where there's some flowers missing. Trying to decide what it is that I put there. And I think that it's going to be just a little bit of yarrow. I'll take a, a stem of it that's a little bit longer and then just place it. Yeah, snipping. I'll hold it off just covering the edge of the center piece, but also softening some of the stems. I'm seeing, okay, that should do it. What you'll do from here is you're going to add more water into your centerpiece when you're going to take it wherever you're going to put it and place it. You'll add more water once you get it to the table. And then you can do another double check to make sure that everybody is in the spot that they're supposed to be. And I'll show you how to what we call the flowers once we get them on the table. 13. Large-Scale: Intro: Well, we've made our center piece that is the perfect size for a dining room table. And now I'm going to show you how to make something large. These are perfect for bars maybe by a fireplace. They're supposed to be a high impact. It's really fun to take a vessel like this and fill it with greenery. During winter time, you can add pine cones. It's just a really fun way to bring the season inside and have a really big impact we're going to do is follow the exact same principles that we used for this arrangement, but we're going to use more product and it's also going to have a bigger impact. Something that I want you to keep in mind is that this is how large this vessel is. We're going to think of making the flower arrangement that's coming out of it to be coming out almost like either the same amount on each side, but you're thinking about of a one to three ratio. So there's one to three. I'm going to try to make it pretty big impact with the product that I have. This is the final product and I'm going to take you through the steps, just like I did for the smaller centerpiece. Don't be intimidated. Sometimes I find these larger scale ones actually much more simpler to do because they take more product and they're a lot more forgiving. Plus they give such a big impact. Let's go ahead and get started. 14. Large-Scale: Base and Mechanics: We've prepped the vase ahead of time. And that's the chicken wire with the taping. I'll show you the inside. That's what that looks like. I'm going to fill it with water. Just like with your smaller center. Same principles apply. We're going to add enough water in here to fill it almost all the way. And we're going to definitely want to keep checking on it. Now that you've got the vase filled, we're going to go ahead and start covering the base. I'm going to use the same products that I use for this centerpiece because basically I want to mirror the same vibe as our smaller centerpiece, but just make it a little more loose and a little more large scale. But first, we've got to cover the mechanics. While I'm doing this large scale design, I'm going to go ahead and just make the arrangement. I'm not going to do a lot of talking while I'm making it. The same steps are going to apply. And I'm still going to break that step by step into different sections, but if you need to, you can totally rewind. Slow down, pause the video if you want to watch what I'm doing. Otherwise, you're going to follow around the same steps as the centerpiece that you had, the more in depth tutorial of before. All right, so I've got pretty much this covered now. My bases covered. I'm going to work a little more on the back, but I'm not going to put as much energy as I will towards the outward facing. One of the things to keep in mind when you're making a bar arrangement or an arrangement like this, it's a large scale. Oftentimes where we're going to be placing it is against a wall. The backside is less important as much as the front side is important. Unlike the centerpiece that we've made over here, which is viewed from all angles, we're really going to focus more on the things coming out towards the front of the bouquet. And put our energy and our flowers there. Focus a little less on the back. Okay, the base is completely covered. There's definitely a lot of ****** where you can still see the chicken ware. But overall, the impact is there. I've got most of the base covered. You can see I kept stems a lot longer than I did with my shorter, more compact center piece. I have a couple of statement pieces such as these solos coming out. I like the way that this covers the base. It also gives it some shape. And it's a really great foundation for the next step, which is adding in the focal flowers. 15. Large-Scale: Focal Flowers and Volume: All right. We have covered the base and now we're ready to start adding our focal flowers. And adding some volume, now's a good time if you're using something that has a lot of greenery in it, like branches, those are really great to put in right now for structural elements within the bouquet. I don't have any of those with me today. We have some stuff that we're going to add on at the end, but they're very delicate stems, so I'm going to place them in more towards the end, rather than doing them right now. I'm going to start with some dahlias and I'm going to start plugging in some focal points coming out towards the viewer. One thing to note when you're adding in your focal flowers is that keep the stems a lot longer for these large scale centerpieces. It's even fun sometimes to just start placing them in and see how they land because really it's meant to have a really big impact. All right, so what I realized is that I'm basically designing all on that side. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come around the front of the table and you'll see most of the back of my body, but you can see where I'm making my placements and whys by just the movements that I'm making and putting them in, I'll explain. Right now, I have a lot of these coming out at the viewer. This one is looking up, this one's looking that direction. This one's coming straight out. This one's looking down at these too. So I like to think of them as having a conversation in their grouping. So I'm gonna come around the table now and keep designing. Oh, 0. Okay, so I've put in all the focal flowers you can see, just like I taught you with the smaller one, it's all about grouping the different varieties together. We've got our echinacea group over here, which looks like it's growing out from the middle dahlia patch. We've got the cosmos over here in the corner. And then we have Lazanthus and then some more Dahlias over here. And then I echoed the white coming down over here just to give a mountainous effect going downhill. I really didn't do much back here. I didn't put any focus in here because this won't be seen. And when it comes to putting in like the extra things that we'll do in the next step, I might add a little more here, but the focus really is coming out at the viewer. 16. Large-Scale: Delicate Flowers and Dimension: Now that we've covered the base, we've added our focal flowers, it's time to come into this large scale arrangement and start adding the delicate flowers, the items that add texture, and then some of the other items that are going to add some height, some bulk. And just really finish off this arrangement and make it super dimensional. Before I move on to do this, I'm going to take away the smaller centerpiece. I loved having it next to me, and I'll tell you why. I was able to take a look at it as I was creating this and make sure that they were two cohesive items. So because these are going to be at a dinner party together, I wanted to make sure that they both had a really similar vibe. But I'm going to take them off now because we're going to make this pretty big, and I need the space. I removed the smaller centerpiece, and in its place you have got this beautiful tomato vine. I'm going to use this towards the end because it is so delicate, The stems are very brittle. I've got a little clematis over here, and then some grasses. You can go a little more greenery, rich in a bar piece or a large scale arrangement, because it's not going to be so focused with a color scheme necessarily on a table. I love to keep them mostly flower forward on the table center pieces. But with the bar ones, they're just a really fun, wild moment that you can have a lot of fun with. One thing to note is that as I'm snipping off these smaller pieces of Queen Anne's lace, I'm going to save them because these are really fun to put in bud vases. I know I said I might wait to put the tomato vine in towards the end, but I'm going to do it now because it is genuinely in my way and I keep bumping into it. So I'm going to make a moment with that now. And I think it'll be good because then it'll add the structure and the movement that I'm going for. And then the final touch can be adding in these last little guys. 0. All right. I'm feeling like this is a good place to stop adding a couple of reasons why I don't want to keep adding some more that I really am having a good time with the flowers that are in here, getting to be the focus. Sure, I could add more greenery. And one of the things that you can do with these kinds of arrangements is that you can go really big, you can get them even almost as tall as a person, especially if you're in a really big room. The bigger the impact, the better for the sake of this video, because I am limited to a frame, I'm going to keep it like this so you can kind of see, you can get a really large impact with a big vase and a bunch of flowers just like this. And you don't need to add much more. I think this is a great place to stop. And then what I'm going to do is come back in and just do a double check over the whole arrangement. Make sure everyone is in water. Make sure that the stems are where I want them to be, and then add anything that's needed. 17. Large-Scale: Final Touches and Comparing: I did a quick scan and while I think that she's pretty much done, I just want to try maybe adding some Queen Anne's lace coming off on this side to sort of balance it out. I might take it out later. The other thing that's great, is that you could get it on site to the place where it's going to be, like the bar or the fireplace, and you could say, ooh, I don't like that there and take it out, but I'm going to try it for now, 0. All right. I pulled both of the center pieces here together. We've got the large scale arrangement, and then we have the smaller centerpiece. This is going to show you a really great comparison of how two completely different sized arrangements can have the same impact. While this one's much, obviously grander and bigger in scale, it's definitely a shout out to the littler one. This one and this one both have touches of apricots and sunset colors blending into a little bit of purple. I just wanted to bring these out to show you both of the different scales of the projects that you were working on. 18. Other Designs: Tall Vase: Right here. I have just a few ingredients. We have some yarrow, some chamomile, some fibroptic grass, some alstromia, Queen Ann's lace, and a little frasia. I chose the freesia for the smell. I chose the Queen Anne's lace for some bulk the alstromas because they're easy, the yarrow for color. And these two, just to add a little bit of whimsy, I'm going to start with my hand in a claw shape. I'm going to move this to the side so that you can see. Take your hand, make it into a claw. You're going to take your stems, place them through here. Pull through the bottom of your fingers. I'll start with yarrow. I'm building a frame for other flowers to go in, tucking some in, keeping some tall. Next I'm going to take the Ulster. Maria, remove the greenery going in from the top, pulling through the bottom snipping stems as I go. As you're pulling the stems through, make sure to take any greenery off the bottom. Now, I'm coming in with the Queen Anne's lace. Next, I'll add the meal, because I want to bring some of this over to this section. I'm going to take a little bit off of the side here and add it on the other side to balance out the arrangement. Next I'm going to add some fiber optic grass. This gives the arrangement movement and texture. I'm going to take the fibroptic grass and place it through the top, and bring it down through the bottom of the arrangement. As I go, I'll hold the arrangement further away from me and maybe make some adjustments. I'm rounding out the arrangement around the sides to cover any stems that might be showing and removing as I go, any greenery that looks like it's past its prime. Taking a look, I'm ready now to add my Fresa, again, taking the Frisia, going through the top, pulling through the bottom, keeping it a little taller so it gives dimension to the arrangement. It looks like there's an empty space here. So I'm going to add one more now. I'm going to take a look and add the last piece of yarrow. From here I'll cut my stems so they are even. I've transferred my grip from being a claw to holding the arrangement, bringing my vase over, taking with both my hands and holding these ones tight down at the bottom, then slipping it into the base. From here, I'll check and make sure there's no places where somebody needs to get tucked in. Give it that once one final look and she's done. 19. Other Designs: Bud Vases: Now that you've gotten really comfortable with the flowers and the materials that we're using, we're going to take the leftover flowers that you didn't use in the center piece and the large arrangement, and we're going to turn them into bud vases. These are smaller little tiny vases and they're perfect for putting in bathrooms. They're perfect for adding to a table that you're putting together for a dinner. They're also just a really great way to take the leftover flowers that you have and make little tiny arrangements. Here are some of the leftovers that we didn't use. And I'm just going to show you the basics you can use, just about anything. Sometimes I'll use glass bud bases. These are the ones that I made. They're little ceramic ones and I've already filled them with water. There's not a real rocket science to this, which is amazing and awesome. It's one of the easier things to do. Sometimes it's fun to put younger children on this project, they really enjoy the miniature aspect of it. Well, let's take the leftover flock and one of the things I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stagger heights, so I'm gonna have some kind of taller, some a little bit shorter. You'll notice that I'm not working on any specific one at a time. I'm taking one single item and I'm adding it to each of the bases. It should be a quick little project with not a lot of thought put into it. All right, I got a little piece of leftover silos, Let's go to stick that one. Sugars snark. I'll note I'm putting two into some of them. Sometimes it's nice to just have a single variety in a bud base. Cosmos are a great opportunity for bud vases to add some height. You can also do this once you have a table already set. You can place the bud vases along the table and then just plug in flowers as you go. That way you don't even have to move them around. And then you can see what they look like in this space. But I'm going to add a really tall one to this one. So by just taking some leftovers, we were able to make a bunch of different little tiny arrangements, that'll be great to stagger along a table scape. 20. Other Designs: Fruit Styling: Next I'm going to show you how to use fruits as part of floral arranging. I love to take fruits and I like to put them on the tablecape, along with floral arrangements. And also at events, I like to put them around because technically they add really good color and they are part of styling in terms of floristry. Also, I'm going to explain to you what the fruits are that I chose and then give you a quick demo of how you can place them along the table, in a tablescape. And you'll see me also demo this later when I do a Tablescape. Um, all right, so let's get into it. So, I've got a bowl of fruit and I think what I'm going to do is move this center piece to the side so I can show you. Or let's see, can I get in there and show you? Just like this, Maybe I'll come up front. All right, let's see if we can get that in the frame. The reason why I want to move the centerpiece quite yet is because I want you to see how these colors are playing off of the floral arrangements as a whole. I don't really want to move them out of the way, just so that you can kind of see how that is. Maybe I'll move this to the side a little bit. Bring that in. Okay. So I went to the grocery store and I went to the fruit section, and I just picked ones that I knew were going to go along with the floral arrangements that I'd made. So I knew I had a lot of apricot tones. I knew that there was a little bit of hit of pink in there, some greens and even just a little splash of purple. I found these pluots, I think that they are, and I like these because they have a lot of yellow and they also have a little bit of orange or burnt orange even lending into kind of like that apricot sunset color that we used for. Pretty much the whole theme of these arrangements. I chose those, I got the cherries because I felt like they would bring out some of the colors of the zinias, which I think they really do, don't you? Then these are some little plums. These I thought would pull in some purple. There's not really quite this color in any of the arrangements, but it also works as defining for shadows. Shadows within the arrangements. It's just a darker color in general. It's going to pull out some elements and give depth to the table. Within this also, there's some grapes, mangoes. The grapes are a great choice because I love how small the fruits are on them and I'm actually going to show you how to put these in the arrangement. Also we have mangoes and then a good honeydew melon, which if you look at the honeydew melon, let's pull it out. Actually, this melon almost like encompasses the colors exactly of this arrangement. If you compare it over here to the Queen Anne's lace or even the echinacea, it's pulling the colors straight off of the petals pretty much. There's a little tinge of rusted apricot in there. There's a little bit darker green just like the stems. There's a lighter green, there's a little bit of white. And then the shell of the melon itself has that white tone in it. And it's just really pretty. This is a great idea to have one just in cut in half. You can buy them in the grocery store just like this. I can add fruit into it, and I'll show you how I might style this on the table. Another option that I love is the grapefruit. It is so bright, it's going to be one of the brightest things on the table, which will kind of make your eye dance around the table if I take this away. Pretty muted besides the cherries that I put there. Now, if I add the grape fruit in down here, it's just going to make your eye travel around. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to take the fruit and I'm going to start to place it around the table and be a little bit quiet probably while I do it. And you can kind of see how I might start incorporating fruit into a table scape. It might be a little bit tricky to see it within the frame, but it gives it a really Dutch still life perspective and makes the whole atmosphere feel very alive. Next, I'm going to take some grapes out of the fruit basket and show you how to insert them into the arrangements. I'm looking for a little space that might be nice, and a lot of times I'm going to use fruits more around the base of an arrangement, less up top, unless I was taking it and draping it all the way over, but more just right tucked in around the base. That way when I have it in there it can relax and drape down onto the table. This one's much larger and it's not important that these get put into the water. I'm going to stick this one right here, carefully making sure that I'm tucking it in, but also that it is draping, but it doesn't look like it's just flopping out of the arrangement. And that might involve cutting off some of the fruit itself. But for now, I'm just going to tuck this one in, rest it, and then you can see it's coming down off the side of the arrangement. It's a really great accent. I feel like it pairs beautifully with these tomato vines that I stuck in here. And it's just so much fun to add fruit to florals. Let's see, do I feel like tucking any more into this one? Maybe I'll demo how to stick a little bit. Going over the top, I'm going to have it just draping with that solia. That was a quick demonstration of how to add fruit to flower arrangements. Also a quick demonstration on and sourcing fruits that will match your table scape and your florals really nicely. 21. Tablescape: All right. You can see that the center piece that we made earlier is now in the middle of the table. I went ahead and set the table for us. And what I will do from here is I'm going to just do a double check on the centerpiece. And that's what I was telling you about earlier which was what I called Jing. This is where we go in and we check all the different angles and look for anything that was dead. As I placed this earlier, I saw a couple of dead Pa. I went ahead and took those out. I think it's looking pretty good right now. Just adjustments that might be needed. Like maybe you want to have something that's reaching up a little bit more like I think I'm going to place that like that, doing a quick double check. And then I'm going to go grab the bud vases that we made earlier too, and show you how you can set those before we then add the fruit. All right, here's all of our bud vases. I'm just going to set this over here for now. They are so cute. As I go around the table, I like to group bud vases in groups of three or two. Sometimes I'll do a little cluster, like I might stick one over there to balance out the table. It's a really great way of getting your table to feel really full without needing a bunch of really huge center pieces. And I'm going to come around to the front. Also, it's a tight table. I'm going to take a step back and take a look. I'm seeing a gap right here, so I might try to take playing. All right, I've got my fruit bowl here, and as you can see, what we selected earlier really plays with the flowers nicely. Some of these items are really big, and I'm probably not going to use them on this smaller table because this is a demo table. But if you had a larger table and you were entertaining more people, these larger pieces of fruit would be perfect candidates to throw around on the table as well. I'm going to come over on the other side and start placing some fruit in a couple of different places. Just so you can see what that might look like. To do a little fruit styling on the table too. I'm basically playing around with putting the fruit at the bases of the candle holders of the bud vases. Avoiding the plates, because obviously that's where guests will be eating. Keeping clear of those and making it really part of the table. Scape. 22. Conclusion: The table set, the candles are lit, it's time for us to conclude the course. I hope you had a really wonderful time. I know I had a great time teaching this course. I hope that if you took this course that you walked away with a little something that you didn't know before, whether it's your first or your 50th arrangement that you've done. I would love to see what you've made. If you could please, please please share on Instagram on this platform. You can e mail me if you want to. I would just love to see what you create. Thanks again for taking the course and look forward to teaching you in the future. Bye.