Tag: hydrangea

Craft Projects, Wreath

Floral centerpiece

Jessica Smith

Flowers on crate

The hubby gave me beautiful pink flowers recently that I happily placed on our crate coffee table in our family room. Now I am not a pink girl — not in the least bit. But the pop of pink against our gray walls and surrounded by the cool colors I tend to prefer, well, it just worked!

Once the flowers died I knew that I wanted to make a flower centerpiece for that room using the pinks that looked so great.

So this past weekend I spent and hour — AN HOUR — in Michaels flower section picking out just the right flowers. I am really picky when it comes to fake flowers. If they are trying to look real, but are so obviously fake, then I don’t want anything to do with them. So that leaves me with flowers that are pretty but obviously not real and then the really good imitation (read: really expensive) flowers.

For this arrangement, I opted for the most realistic flowers I could find. Thankfully the flowers were 40% off and I had a 20% off coupon, or my centerpiece would have cost $75 just for the flowers! Um, no thanks!

After carefully selecting the flowers I wanted and some floral foam, I rushed home to create my work of art. I used a gorgeous vase I bought last summer in Lancaster, Penn. When I saw the vase I knew I had to have it, even if I didn’t have an immediate use for it. I thought maybe I’d use it to hold kitchen utensils, but it didn’t looks so great with my green walls. So it’s been sitting in my basement for 8 months begging to be used.

I cut the floral foam to fit into the bottom of the vase, then started cutting the fake flowers to length and sticking them into the foam. After several different arrangements, I had something I was happy with (mostly). I took a couple of grocery store baggies and stuffed them into the base, then poured small rocks on top to hide the bags. This helps keep the flowers from shifting too much, allowing the centerpiece to keep its shape over time.

I think I’ll probably add in a few more flowers into the few gaps, but I love this so much I can’t even tell you. It makes me smile every time I walk by it. I can’t tell which I’m happier by — flowers year-round or the fact that I finally put my beautiful pottery to use. ❤ Love.

Floral Arrangement

Flowers in room

Craft Projects

A wreath for us

Jessica Smith

I showed you on Saturday how to make a wreath using fake flowers and a grapevine base — I had a few flowers left over, so I decided to create a wreath for our front door!

I had a wire form that I picked up from Michaels, but not enough flowers to go all of the way around it.

To cover the rest of the wreath form, I chose to wrap it in twine. To do so, I knotted the twine and started going around the edge of the wreath. It took about 30 minutes and an entire spool of twine, but I really like the look of it.

By the time I made it close to the end of the wreath, I realized I wouldn’t have enough twine to wrap the whole thing. That didn’t matter though, because I was planning on filling that void with the faux flowers.

So, I knotted the end of the twine and started to add the flowers.

Since all of the flowers are on wire, I was able to bend the “stems” around the wires of the exposed wreath form. Once all of the flowers were placed, I took floral wire and secured the flowers even more to the form.

It’s not pretty, but no one will ever see the back, so who cares!?

I embellished with a few leaves, adding them to the wreath with hot glue at each end of the flowers. And with that, my wreath was finished. It only took about an hour — not too bad!

Craft Projects

A wreath for Mom

Jessica Smith

My Momma has a large, blank canvas (literally) covering her electrical box in her basement. It’s painted the same color as the walls so it blends in, but it was so empty and screaming for some sort of decoration. At Christmas, Mom puts a wreath on the canvas. So I said, why not make a wreath for the rest of the year?

So Momma and I headed to Michaels today to pick out supplies for her wreath. We got a grapevine wreath, lots of flowers, a wreath hanger and green wire.

Then I got down to business.

I set the wreath on the floor and started to plan out how I would place the flowers. We picked purple and green hydrangea, purple orchids, some big white flowers, and a few purple vines. After planning out my arrangement, I got to setting the flowers on the wreath.

I started with the strand of orchids, cutting the extra wire down and placing it into the wreath. Once the orchid was stuck through the grapevine, I flipped over the wreath and tied the orchids to it with green floral wire. I tied the orchids in several spots, curving them along the natural cure of the wreath.

Then, I added the green hydrangea, two white flowers and one purple flower.

Once my big-ticket flowers were on the wreath, I started to play around with the vines. I wanted to carry the flowers around more of the wreath, so I started weaving the vines in and our of the grape vines. I used two different types of faux vine, both with purple accents. I then cut up the purple hydrangea and added it to other parts of the wreath. I secured all of the flowers with floral wire or hot glue. The large flowers I used both, and the small hydrangea buds I used only glue.

Then, I drove the wreath over to Mom’s house. I am going over for dinner tomorrow night, but I couldn’t wait to show her what I made so soon after we bought the supplies — overall, this wreath took me about 45 minutes to make! Not too bad.

We took the wreath down to her basement, and it looked perfect.

Ready to see the whole wreath!?!?!

 

That’s it! I’m quitting my job and becoming a professional wreath maker. So much fun! Too bad they are pricey to make (the base alone was $9… dang.).

Lurv itttttt.