Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction and Overview

Today during the course we are going to try to cover three different styles hopefully we'll get to all three of them and these are probably the most popular styles of arrangements that ideo I focused mostly on the wedding industry apps and events, and when I first meet with the client many times they have a theme that they are trying to accomplish and two of the main ones that I hear all the time are rest iq and vintage. So we're going to cover two different styles of that today and explain kind of how you can incorporate that or not a cz you're doing your designs and before we start with that, though, I do want to talk a little bit about some of the items that when you prep had a time when your styling your flowers for a party or for an event you kind of, you know, plan ahead of time right to you think about what she wanted accomplished during your party. So some of the things you might think about why you're preparing and deciding is where you want to use flowers if you're doing this...

in your home, do you want some flowers in your entryway when your guests first arrived? You want to put some in your bathroom, which that's one of my favorite places because they can always use a pretty flowers and something has a nice fragrance in there are you going to have a sit down dinner party where you want to have flowers on your table? Is it going to be a buffet where people are going to be milling around the island? You know, if you're doing an outdoor event you know, do you want to have flowers in different areas? So you kind of consider what your goal is on where you want to place flowers and how much you want to try to accomplish in that regard? Um and then again, if you have a party style or colors that you're trying to work with sometimes like for baby showers we do those a lot and they're very centric on boyer girls many times, so maybe it's a blush pink if you're doing a baby shower for a girl, maybe it the fourth of july party I get a lot of requests for those too, and they want flowers that are red, white and blue so you know, think about how you want to do those kinds of things those aren't necessarily styles per se but there's you know, some color choices that you might choose in that regard and then we will talk more about some of the styles when you mentioned rustic and vintage another will try to cover today is modern, which is a much cleaner look that works for an immense amount of situations which is really great and then think about if you have a budget for how much you want to spend on your flowers, do you have your own garden where you khun pick your own flowers from or supplement with store bought flowers? Today we're working, we're doing really large arrangements today to kind of stretch your boundaries on your design skills and to show you that you can do something larger than you might think you can. But you know, when you think about if you were to go out and purchase all these flowers that it's a fairly large budget in that regard, so think about the time of year if you're trying to dio a winter party, flowers are more expensive in the winter because they're not necessarily naturally growing, especially around here you know when your time it's pretty cold there's not a lot in my garden, I know you can still find flowers, but they're going to be at a higher price more than likely in the summer it's in abundance you khun go wild really for not too much money, which is really nice, so consider that and then finally you know how much time do you have available to us to realistically do a flower arranging again? I work with a lot of do it yourself brides on dh many of them will come to me and want to do their centerpieces are an idea they're personable case or something like that and and that's perfectly fine. I love that brides want to be more engaged with what they're doing and being a part of their designing and whatnot, but it's also takes a lot of time, so you have to be considered, you know that in your, you know, in your party designing, do you are you cooking and cleaning and doing everything? And do you have enough time to do this? Can you do it a day in advance? Do you have some place to store your flowers and there's a lot to think about? And as we go along today, you'll notice you'll see how much time it does take to accomplish some of these things, and then you'll you'll be better prepared to know. Yeah, I could do that that seems realistic. That's not too difficult or no, probably not for this time. You know you can make those decisions, which is really great. And then one more slide for you all prepping your flowers. Now, this is something I talk a lot more about in our flower guide, which I believe is something that you can access on the website which is in that explains this in more detail, how I go about prepping my flowers for this where I source them from but some things to think about when if you're purchasing flowers from a store grocery stores you know you know that they come in those cellophane sleeves um so when you get things home you need to take him out of the sleeves right away I wouldn't leave them in there it kind of traps too much heat moisture so you want to do that? Sorry for interrupting I just wanted to let the people know at home what you were talking about when you said the flower you so if you go to the course page or below the viewers screen that you're watching you click on the title of this guy course, you click on that I'll take you to the course page when you scroll down, you'll see there's some bonus material that are included with the purchase of the class which are basically they're titled making tall arrangements for entry ways or around the home oh no that's the session that's for the bonus materials are you there's a flower guide and that is basically all you have to do is r s v p for the course and you can download that there's also bonus materials that are included with the purchase of the course including the floral design guide and as well as the d I y floral instruction so I just wanted to let you know that thank you so it's so definitely removing any kind of plastic wrap by our rubber bands ties any of those kind of things you want to have your flowers a chance to breathe and get readjusted removes the bottoms of the leaves on your stamps now all the fires we did for today have already been prepped in that regard, so anything that's below these are really tall buckets, but whatever you're going to be transferring your flowers into just make sure wherever your water line is that there's no leaves or other debris below that the leaves when they're in water, start to decompose and create bacteria growth and the flowers longevity is affected by that, so just strip all those off you're not going to need him anyway, so take care of that always re cut your stems so that your flower gets a fresh cut to start drinking water again that's always really important using clean buckets I know that sounds really like everyone should know that, but what is really important, especially for me, I always clean mine after use clean them with a little bit of bleacher other cleaners just to make sure the bacteria is all out of there and it's not affecting your flowers if you're going to store your flowers for a little while maybe you purchased them the day in advance of when you're going to be arranging them try to keep them in a cooler place you know I keep him in a garage someplace in a basement if you have air conditioning that's usually fine but just not in a super warm house it's just going to cause the flowers to open a lot faster than you might want that sometimes that's a good thing if you have rose buds that you're trying to get ready for the next day and there's still really tight you might want to leave them in your main part of your house and try to see if the open in time those kinds of things lily's or another item that many times you'll purchase those and there'll be really tight buds so some situations you want to do that but generally you're going to try to get as much life out of your flowers as you can so you're going to want to try to keep them cool and then finally gathering your jules you're going to need clean clippers are shears to cut those will be using some today you'll see in just a bit there they're like a gardening tool they're meant to cut through that the big stems sometimes if you're using really woody plants which I don't believe we have a lot of that today you'll get you'll need even stronger ones but generally a common garden shares this is more than adequate on dh will be introducing a few other tools today some floral tapes you might need for creating grids to help. In your flower arranging styles, some things like that floral tape we might get into just a little bit. Well, basic, nothing too complicated by the you you might want to start keeping some of those tools on hand if you plan to do this little more, and then are lucky we got a bucket down here for all our garbage, the audience won't see that, but you're going to create a lot of debris, and so I always when I arrange in my kitchen on a really big island, and I bring a chair over and stick a bucket on it, and I just scraped everything into it, you know, it gets most of it, but just to kind of keep your table clean as you're moving along so kind of you, you'll see as we move along that there will be a lot of debris here, and it kind of gets really messy. So so that is some of the prepping things that to talk about some of this out of the way for now and now we will show you one of the first arrangements were going to make, and this is really tall, so hopefully I'm not standing behind it, this is going to be our arrested conspired? Yes, I shouldn't have back about when you were saying about, you know, the pri yes, we're pretty arranging when you buy flowers in the store that you know they give you that little packet to throw in the water does that really work or do you really need to put that in so that's commonly called flower food? Okay there's all different kinds of brand names, but you're right that generally especially in the grocery stores will provide that I don't use that a lot of people do and that's perfectly fine what that basically is it is it has, like typically three ingredients in there it's sugars a new element that reduces the bacteria growth cameron with third witness right now, but I know I talk about it in the flower guide um in that it definitely will help increase the length of your flowers the minute you cut a flower off of a plant, it starts dying basically so it's that is replacing its food source so that's definitely a possibility and when I cut from my garden I just put them in clean water. Honestly, I don't store mind for an immense long time because I dio weddings and events I typically only hold my flowers for two or three days and then they go out to their final destination really I but when you're trying to do something if especially if you want to create arrangements for your home and you're trying to keep them a little longer right? Make them last a week or something. Then you might want to use that and that's perfectly fine. But you don't necessarily have to does that help? Yes. Ok. Any other questions? Before I started, I did kind of jump ahead. Yes, no question basically said that you have to re cut your son's. Yeah, I guess I have. Ah, big problems that ok, it's, like I cut my stands and I know you're supposed to cut them, but do it. Cut them every day to people really go around their house and cut off the stems and rearrange every single day. Or like that's the process behind that I've always wondered, right? No, I don't do that every day. I think that would be yeah, I just that's a lot of work. I'm mostly talking about when you purchase flowers from, like another source because and you'll see the stems will be maybe a little deteriorated. They might be a kind of a better term and slimy that's. Right? You can see that they're starting to break down. So that's what I mean about getting fresh cut if you pick him straight from your garden. You've already done that cut, and you're probably fine on dh, then said, and then we'll re cut him for a second or I guess the third time, depending on where you were at your process when you put them in the arrangement and generally at that point, I leave them if I see that a flower in a day or two is is wilting a little bit, maybe he's, not all the way down in the water completely, I might pull just that one out and recut it. Um, once it's been exposed to air on no longer in the water, it seals itself off kind of like when you get your own cut in, your body starts, you know, healing and it's the same situation, so you do need to recut it at that point time. I think the biggest thing, though, when you're trying to keep flowers alive in your home, is just keep the water level up and and that's probably more important than re cutting them. Other people might have an issue with that, but that's what I do personally and you'll see, especially the first time you arrange it that first day they're going to drink a ton of water, so check it definitely the next day, yeah, what I need to be changed in every day, then now I refill it. If you're trying to get if you're doing like trying to get a week, I would probably like midway through the third or fourth day, I might re change the water at that point in time. If you are using a clear glass, you're going to be able to tell that the water is getting a little cloudy or it's looking not so great, and this kind of base you, you're not going to know, but, yeah, third or fourth day I would I'd pullem out there perfectly. They're going to be in a nice, big, easy to move group, so don't be afraid to pull them out. You know, they're not going toe necessarily fall apart, you had to start all over again, but, yeah, I would do that. That makes sense to me.