Today is the Designer Craft Connection Blog Hop for April. The theme for the month is flowers and we had an extra challenge to use stuff we already had on hand.

Hello, do you know me?

I have 3-5 gallon buckets full of “silk” flowers I’ve been hanging onto because I can’t make myself get rid of them. Right up my alley and perfect timing too.

You see, I’m a bit of a nut when it comes to flowers and I like to have a vase of fresh flowers on my dining table as often as possible. As you can imgine, since Warren lost his job we are on a tighter budget and I often don’t want to spend the extra cash for fresh flowers.

So I’ve been wanting to make a “silk” arrangement to fill in when I don’t have fresh on the table.

PLUS I’ve decided that I’m going to try not to buy ANY new craft supplies for the month of April. I’m going to get by as much as I can without buying anything new. I’m looking forward to getting creative with my projects and using up a bunch of supplies I have on hand here.

So let’s talk flora design.

I’ve had this container in my floral design closet for quite a while now. I remember being “challenged” with it in my floral design class way back when. The instructor brought in various containers that she thought might be a bit tricky for us to design in along with  a bunch of flowers and then told us to impress her.

I remember that she apologized for this container but I LOVED it.

In this arrangement I am using “silk” flowers (permanent botanicals  if ya want to get fancy) but the basics are the same if you are using fresh.

Cut a piece of floral foam to fit into and fill up the container. If you are using fresh flowers you will use a different kind of floral foam than for silk so keep that in mind.

A couple of things to think about before starting… This arrangement is going on my table so it’s not very tall  (about 9 inches at the highest point) so that people can see one another over it. Also, because it’s going on a table and will be visible from all sides be sure to design all sides to they look nice. Designing all the way around uses more flowers so keep that in mind when selecting flowers.

Now I am ready to start by setting up my lines. You can see from the arch I drew over this arrangement how wide and tall the finished piece will be. No other flowers will break this line. Sometimes bits of filler or greenery will break the line but not flowers.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t like a very symmetrical arrangement so having that top flower off center and the one on the right in a little farther than the one on the left is fine by me. If you like things to be more symmetrical feel free to make yours more evenly spaced.

Then I fill in with flowers, filler and greenery.

I try to use 3 different colors and 3 different sizes of flowers as well as 3 different textures if I can.

The nice thing about designing with silk flowers is that they are very forgiving. If you cut a stem too short you can tape it to another piece of stem, if it’s too long you can cut it again or bend it into place and if you accidentally pull the head off a flower you can simply put it back on again.

Plus you don’t need to remember to change the water ever day or so.

Frankly, I prefer fresh flowers but good quality silk flowers are a good option too.

Please use the widget below or the one in the right hand column of my blog to navigate through the rest of the hop.

PS. My favorite tool for cutting floral wire and big stems is my Knipex Wire Cutters and you can read more about them here: Tool Box Tuesday – From the Archives – Knipex Review