Flower Arranging

I make bouquets now. Bouquets are cool. Actually, I've been making bouquets for years. The first 'grown-up' craft I got into was flower arranging. I bought books on it. I watched florists working. I stocked up on florists wire and tape (which comes in very useful when I make sugarpaste flowers, but that's beside the point.) I even befriended a local florist (a very nice woman) who gave me left over flowers to practice with and showed me how to use chicken wire instead of florist foam as a base for non-posy arrangements.

The back of the bouquet

The problem with flower arranging (or keeping flowers in the house generally) is it's quite expensive and the final result isn't useful like something knitted (I'm not sure if I've mentioned, I knit) or yummy like something baked. That said, I get to do it sometimes.

And from above

The bouquet above I made for a friend for her wedding. She wanted white and possibly something to match her outfit (it wasn't a formal wedding and she wasn't wearing white). I choose to pick up the blue flowers from her skirt by using blue anemones as an accent flower (a nice extra something blue). I used beautiful, large, just off white roses as the main flower. I'd planned on adding a bit of interest with some white spray roses but then I found lovely, white lisianthus and decided they'd do nicely instead. I love lisianthus in a bouquet, the full blooms are so delicate and the buds, with their lovely green hue, stick up past the blooms giving a nice depth to the posy. I used a white grosgrain ribbon to bind the stems (I like covering the whole of the stem, personally) and pinned it in place with a row of white and deep bluish straight pins down the back.

Now for something completely different 

Recently I saw some lovely red tulips on sale at my local flower stand. The man who runs the stand is lovely and had some daffodils that were on the verge of wilting so he threw in 3 bunches of them with my two bunches of sale-priced tulips. (He's a nice guy.) I loved red tulips with the yellow daffodils so I figured I'd have to arrange them together. Since they are floppier flowers (the stems of tulips really aren't strong enough to hold up the head without bending), I figured the flowers wouldn't stay where I put them for very long (since the stems would bend), so I decided to make them into a nice little posy. I didn't wrap the stems (there wasn't any point, it was going into a vase, not being carried) but I like the look of the raw string I used with the everyday, garden flowers. (Sorry, I had my hand over it in all the photos I took...whoops.) I think it came out beautifully--a perfect springtime bouquet!