Arranging Fresh Flowers

I love fresh flowers!  Anytime I'm in a flower shop or a grocery store I look at the arrangements with wonder, wishing I could take one home with me.  Sometimes it's really hard to justify $50 for a flower arrangement that is going to last a week, if that is, I managed to keep the cat away from them.

Well I've found a way to turn those cheaper bunches of cut flowers into an arrangement that looks just as good as the $50 arrangement.  This simple trick not only saves you money, but you can create an arrangement with any combination of flowers.  This technique works especially well for flowers with flimsy stems like daisies and tulips.

I originally wanted to make an arrangement of tulips for spring because they were on sale at Sobey's for $2 a bunch!  So Roman and I headed out in the wind to find us some tulips.  Of course when I got there there were only 3 bunches of tulips left and the looked as if Roman had been using them as a teething toy.  Not the look I was going for.  So I decided to use mini gerbera daisies since they were on sale Buy 1 Get 1 Free!

Supplies
Fresh cut flowers (how many you need will depend on the size of your vase)
Vase
Double sided tape

Tape out a grid on the top of your vase.  I started by running a strip of tape horizontally in the middle of my vase.  Then added more strips of tape leaving a space between each strip as wide as the tape itself.  You can leave a larger space if you have flowers with larger stems.  Repeat this process with the tape running vertically.  Taping out this grid is the secret to arranging flowers!  The grid will hold the stems up and allow you to position them just the way you want them.  It also makes your arrangement look fuller without having to buy more flowers. 

I prefer to use double sided tape for two reasons; 1. it's super sticky and holds well on glass, and 2. it's not as wide as regular tape so you have more spaces for flowers.  You want just enough tape hanging over the edge of the vase that it stay in place but is still covered by the flowers once they are in the vase.

To prepare the flowers, remove as many leaves from the flowers as you can.  The flower will use energy to keep the leaves alive.  If you remove the leaves, the flower will use that energy to keep the bloom alive rather than the leaves.  If you like the leaves, just remove the ones that will fall below the water line, as this will keep your water clean. 

Now all you have to do is place your flowers in the holes left in the grid.  You can experiment with how you want your arrangement to look and trim your flower stems accordingly.  *TIP -  cut your flower stems on an angle.  This allows the flower to pull in more water, which makes it last longer.  You can have more than one flower per space and you may not use all the spaces in the grid.

Doesn't this look so much better than tossing the flowers into a vase and having them all flop over the edges?!  There is nothing worse than spending money on fresh flowers only to be disappointed with the way they look in a vase.  The tape grid makes these $20 worth of gerbera daisies look like a $50 arrangement you'd purchase at a florist.

If you need to top up the water in the vase, simply insert a funnel into one of the spaces in the grid.  This way you won't have to completely rearrange your flowers.  The simple addition of a ribbon around the centre of the vase would make this a great gift for someone!