Lessons

Lesson Info

Preparing the Bundles

Can we unwrap this garland and show everybody what we're going to try to do? Tio so there's a massive garland ok, so this is not one giant piece of foliage, so we're going to show you how to assemble this so you can see this is pretty bond all it is comprised of a smaller bundles of the foliage and flowers, so there is a little overwhelming when you see it like this, but really all it isthe several pieces like this, so I'm going to show you how we get from this to this, okay? So first things first, when you buy your greens, they're going to come and in pretty big pieces like this for a lot of people, so you're you want to break it down and trim the pieces, I just kind of get in there it's kind of fun, get out some anger and aggression and break up your flowers and then it's also fun to make a mess, so it's like cleaning that? Yeah, so I'm just kind of processing those materials and getting them a little smaller and more manageable pieces to work with. So basically I'm going to try to m...

ake little one and a half to two foot long bundles, so and you very this we're trying to make a very full, lush garland, but if you want to thinner garland just you smaller pieces if you want a bigger garland use bigger pieces and we're gonna show you what you would use smaller and bigger garland for later and well, so s o I'm just processing some of these materials so now I have this is magnolia one of my favorites I love how has the two tones the back of the leaf is brown and the front is the shiny green um so I have that all into pretty manageable pieces so same thing with this all live it's pretty hard to use so say thing I'm just going to get in there now you can use your shares if you want your flower clippers um uh but for this I'm just kind of breaking it down into smaller pieces. This goes faster for me um and then I will use the scissors and a little bit a good pair of floral clippers is imperative yeah or some of the branches you may even need the big hackers that you have in your garage. So the idea is just you're going to do this with all of your materials and now when I am making my garland, I would say that you need a bundle of h material that you're going to use for pretty much every three feet of garland that you plan to have, so we're going to make a six foot garland and I want to do all live magnolia and eucalyptus I'm going to need basically two bundles of each material to do that so and um it's great if you can get it from your backyard or easy to find source so that you can always go pick more maybe, um, but just showing you how I break these down like that and then getting the greens off of the stands so that when I wrap it with wire and I'm going to show you that part in a little bit that it's all easier to work with, so first things first is actually break down everything, then you need to get your materials ready. Um, you only need a few materials to build the garland, so you need your foliage is of course, and then you need this paddle wire so this is what we're going to use to connect everything and keep it in place, then we need this string. This is what we're going to build the garland on just any old piece of string that you confined at home string rope if you don't have that at home, you can even use the the wire, it just is harder to unravel that also, the string is easier to use and then to assemble the different bundles that we're going to make, you just need some floral wire I'm using twenty to engage you want something that's pretty flexible and not too thick so that you can wrap it around the stems easily. And this is you just keep your bundles in place. So now that I've prepped a few materials, and then I have some already process ones here, I'm going to show you how to assemble these little, um, bundles process. Okay, so got the magnolia large work. Yeah, yeah, you can do this on the floor. Tio. Itjust you're back. I'll get sick of it after a while. So I got my, uh, olive, my magnolia. We're also going to add a little jasmine into days, garland, and there really is no recipe. So it's, like whatever you have, if you wanted to look very consistent than you want to make a bundle will show you the exact same follows two the whole garland, but somebody will run out of one thing. And garland looks great no matter what you put in it really yet. So the idea is that you had to process all of your materials first before you start building the little bundles. And then you're going to need a lot more of these little bundles than you think, so you have to build all of these bundles before you start with here, garland because it's really hard if you're like oh crap I have two feet of garland left and no flowers left so um prepare all of your bundles first and then it also make the garland process go a lot more streamlined and efficient you haven't have an estimate of about like how many stems or what? How much garland you need to act for actually each bundle and then for each foot yeah that's a great question so it depends on what what foliage or using really so fears in orly thin one um like olive, but so you wanted to be been like one of the ideas we're going to show you is you know what we did all olive but very thin we probably used five stamens you prefer to make a really thin one, but if you're using something like magnolia are you like this? You're not gonna need nearly as much because it's so bulky really test one do what you think you want to do test it. It'll probably fill out a lot quicker than you think so like you know, making one like this becomes easier than you think because you thought it was going to half that size and then use adding stuff and it gets really big s o make one bundle first look at it and say because that's going to be this bundle it's gonna be going to be this times to really think of it because you're going to make sure you're gonna be layering and on top so think of this as like half the one that you make us half a big is what it's going to turn out being so great that we don't make him all I have to redo him because it ends up being too big yeah, so great point um okay, so then I'm just going to grab a few these pieces and start to build this bundle so again I'm going for like, about a a foot and a half tio two feet for this if you want a tighter bundle of you just say six inches to a but again it's just like what you're happened to be looking for, so I'm just adding a few stems and trying to get them uniformed and size I don't really have like too much of a science here and then I know I need a little jasmine, so I feel like that's almost similar in size maybe I need like one more piece so that's nine pieces you have this one that she's doing so that's, you know, pretty similar in size and then I'm going to just, uh secure that with my piece of floral wire here, so I just take it and I'm just wrapping this around a couple of times and it doesn't have to be the most secure thing ever I'm just you know just so that it doesn't awful apart when I'm trying to work with it and then I'll give these a little trim so that it's easier for me to work with so I'll just trim the stems um in terms of how short to trend them I would say you probably want about like four inches of stem so that that gives you you'll see when I'm securing it to the rope that will give me enough stem to make sure that I can travel around this time a couple of times to keep it in place and when you're wiring it where it it has hi as you can't like below the bottom foliage because that will help keep it secure you do it at the very bottom it will have a higher chance of falling apart yeah good point okay and then again I'm just going toe do this a few times with you so you can see how it's really done so just adding a few of each material I'm just trying to get it nice and you know it doesn't have to be perfect but somewhat uniform and look and so I feel like that's about it for that one so I'm going to do that again do you have any questions why she's doing this it's very repetitive yeah this is the hard part is just I mean just really taking the time to do all of this processing work is really important. It makes it all comes together at the end a lot easier. So make one more. We cheated. We have a lot of these already pre made ready to go here so I can pull those out in the second. Yeah, last is longer than the actual flowers. I mean, can you make us, like, a couple of days in advance before you need it? That's why? I just think that it's such a slept on thing that garlands are amazing. You could make him far in advance. They make great centerpieces so you could make him a week ahead, and they'd still be fine e wouldn't make a lot of ahead, though, just to be clear. Giggling a week ahead and some will turn brown. You know, eventually oh, I was just saying, do you keep them in water like you do the flowers as well? You can miss stand like with a spray bottle. Tio, you know, keep everything moist, but the greens just in general, are we're going to live a lot longer. Could be a lot easier to work with greens you have that have little flowers on them. Yeah, that if you're making, I wouldn't use jasmine if you're making a week ahead, but if you're doing it a day or two ahead, that's fine news, jasmine and things like that we're going to do the flowers next where my show you howto plug in flowers and, well, water to the ones that need water too, but you could make the garland part ahead and then just add flowers there on site, which is what we always recommend it's much easier to do it that way. That's a good another bundle cutting those stands a little bit woman I'm going to avoid using this piece or feel like it looks a little funky that might detract from my garland, so I'll just set that aside and might have a later use for it and watch out for bird and I'm not saying I'm blowing here a lot of greenery people tend to forget that actually was in nature, so you get things like that? Um oh, yeah, yeah, jasmine smell so nice, you know, that's actually a really good question if you're using this for centerpieces, you know, jasmine has a really strong sense, like, how does if people are gonna be eating with the with the flowers right there, how do you guys handle that? Yeah, so if their specific we have certain clients that are really specific and say absolutely no smell for anything for centerpieces, even and things like that, then we just make sure we don't use anything that has a strong odor smell bad. A lot of flowers don't smell anymore anyway, because I've been bred to have bigger heads. I was explaining that to someone earlier because they've been bred so many times kind of like full bred dogs. I'm like we've created things that we want, but now there's no smell left in them, so we actually add things with smell because the first thing people d'oh when they get flowers or thinking smell, then so that's why we use a lot of rosemary and mint and herbs like that on dh you see the paper whites that we have today and the jasmine have a smell to them, but we could definitely do without actually don't think I don't subscribe to the thought that like it's going toe alter the dining experience that much because well, maybe if it's inside a small enclosed space, but a lot of these that we do it for outdoor events and things and there's just enough air flow that it's not that bad, but if it wasn't a little private dining room or something, I probably would make sure that I wasn't putting jasmine and stuff, yeah