How To Make A Great Bouquet EVERYTIME!!!

Today I'm going to share with you how to make a great bouquet every single time. I've seen a lot of these videos and they start with a table full of flowers, they put it together into this decadent hundred dollar bouquet, and anyone can make that look attractive. But for me, I sell $20 market bouquets, and the real trick is how do I put together $20 worth of flowers and still make it look full, still make it look balanced, and still make it look beautiful. So I'm going to take this whole table and turn it into multiple bouquets today. It's currently winter here, I have zero green things outside. So I picked up these flowers from my local Costco, and I've actually never worked with these types of flowers before. This is nothing like what I grow here on my farm. But if you understand the basics of how to put a bouquet together, it doesn't matter what you're working with. Understanding how to put together a bouquet means that I can take anything and I can turn it into, you know, the look that I like to make. Normally when I go to make bouquets, I have an entire room filled with a whole assortment of flowers, you know, and I just start working away at it. This was a little bit of a different experience for me because I had to go and actually buy the things that I wanted to be working with. It made me realize that maybe one of my first steps when I go to make bouquets is that I think about the ingredients that I'm going to need. The first bunch of flowers that I picked was this bunch of flowers here because I knew that this was a good base and I really liked the light blush color because it would be versatile for doing multiple things. But I don't like light blush soft romantic, so the next thing I had to do was get something bright. So I picked out these orange, orange spray roses here, which I just love the color. And then to bring some more contrast, I got these purple, purple mums. What these elements are is basically I have my bulk, I have my focal flower, and then I have my filler flower. The one thing they didn't have that I really wanted was greenery. They didn't have any straight bunches of greenery, so I actually bought a bouquet, which I took apart. So I have a bucket of greenery here, but it also came with a few other elements that I really like to have when I work on the bouquets at my farm. They had some interesting textural bits with these berries. You know, something like this is going to add a lot of visual interest, even though it's not, you know, taking up a bunch of space. And then they had, you know, a really decadent focal flower, kind of the single flower that you build the entire bouquet around. I'm going to put together some pretty basic bouquets. I'm just going to make simple $20 bouquets, so I don't need this big, fancy focal. What I'm going to be using as my focals instead is just these purple ones, but it's still going to be really attractive without having to have a really expensive single stem. Here on my farm, another element that I really like to have in all my bouquets is spikes, something that's just very long and very vertical. And I love having these in a bouquet. You know, I add probably three spikes to every single one of my $20 bouquets that I make. But I already had spent $80 on flowers, so I didn't think it was worth buying another bunch. So we're working without spikes today. But consider, you know, the different shapes of flowers. There's more that you work with than just what I have here. The colors that you choose and the size and the textures of the flowers that you work with, that is, you know, about design. That's about your personal flair and your personal style. So I'm a believer that there's no real rules for what's right and wrong for that. But when it comes to the technique for putting it together, I use a pretty standard practice. So I use something called the spiral technique, which there's a million videos that you can find on how to do this. You know, but basically, the idea is that you aren't putting the flowers, you know, you put the flowers together like that doesn't really do anything for the flowers. But if you spiral them out, you know, now you start to create this shape and this movement and it brings a huge value to the flowers, right? So this stems, you know, it's filling up a lot of space. This, it's not doing anything. And the idea is that you just kind of cross it. And then instead of adding a flower in straight, you always add the flower in diagonal, you know, and then you turn your hands and you keep adding in the diagonals. And it's hard with the first stems, but it makes a lot more sense when you start adding onto it. So let's make a bouquet. Normally, I start with a couple stems of foilage, but I'm really limited on my foilage. So we're going to hoard it. We're going to save it, make it precious. And what I'm going to start with today is one of my focal flowers, one of my biggest flowers in the arrangement. So I'm going to grab a single one of those and then I'm going to add in my bulk. This is what I've like kind of chosen to be like the main bulk in the bouquet. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to angle it across and then I'm going to start adding in some more. You know, we're making a $20 bouquet here. We're not making a $60 bouquet. We're not making a $100 bouquet. We're not making a $200 bouquet. So I'm going to be cautious about how much I use. So you can see the stems, you know, they're in there. The trick for this is you hold it really gently in your hand, right? So like I'm not, I'm kind of pinching it in there, but if I was to squeeze it, that would then like lose the shape. So I need it to be, you know, it's kind of just like a pinched between the thumb and the finger. And then as it builds, it holds its shape better. I can loosen up that pinch and use my hand to support it a little bit more as I need. But it's, it's one of these things. It's really hard to kind of show it and explain it. But once you get the stems into your hand, after a couple bouquets of doing this, it's just, it becomes second nature and it becomes very natural. That's why it's kind of the standard. It just works really well. Got a little bit of flower. We got a lot of bulk in there. So now let's add in some of this color, this, these roses that I love. So we're putting it in, we're angling it in. And I, you know, I'm being a little bit intentional about where I'm putting stuff, you know, and as you spiral things, you want to make sure that you're spiraling it all in the same direction. You know, if you were building like a, quite a large bouquet, if you're building a hundred dollars bouquet, you wouldn't necessarily be placing these. You just be throwing stems on, you'd be doing this super fast. I'm making a $20 bouquet, right? So we can't throw a million stems in here. So we're, we're going to be a little bit more intentional about where these are placed. Okay. And honestly, this bouquet is almost done, right? So I got a focal, I got some punch of color. I got the filler. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to add three more focals around the edge. You know, I've kind of been working in these threes so that it kind of pairs really nicely. One, now I can use the rest of my hand to support this a little bit more. But you, you want to be turning it. You know, you, you grab it above the pinch point. You know, it's, it's like supported very gently and it's very easy to turn it because you want to be turning it to be adding more stuff in. Almost done. Okay. So now what I want to do now is I want to add some greenery. Normally I would have had some greenery in the center. Don't have very much greenery. So what I'm going to show you is a very classic technique. It's called coloring. And, and it works really good. I don't color very often with greenery. Most of my greenery is these more vertical spike type pieces. So they don't make, you know, a big fan, like how this fern piece is. What I often color with, with my local summer flowers is status because it fans out quite nicely like this. So what you do is you put it around the outside edge, right? And then you turn it. We've done threes for this. We'll do three again, outside edge, turn it and then outside edge. And then what it's done is it's created, you know, a collar all around the outside of the bouquet. But they're $20 bouquet. Very simple. This has, let's see how many stems are in there. This bouquet has 13 stems in it, you know, but it's still, it looks big. It looks full. If I was to come here and grab this, this is 13 stems, right? So, you know, holding it vertical, like the difference that it makes it's, you know, this spiral open bouquet making is what creates, you know, the bouquet look. One thing you want to consider when building a bouquet, especially with homegrown flowers, where they're not necessarily going to be a standardized length is whatever is your shortest stem in the bouquet is where you're cutting the bouquet to. So in this bouquet, these little orange roses that I purchased, they're actually a couple inches shorter than the rest of my stems. So in here, you know, where, where's my shortest one? Right here. So all of this extra, extra length is going to need to be cut off because if not, then when I go to put this into water, then the shortest stem would just be hovering up above. So everything has to be the same, the same height, right? So, so keep that in mind when you're putting stuff together. If your stem is too short, maybe that's going to determine where it's going to sit in the bouquet. Put an elastic on it. The standard florist way to put an elastic on is you put it over a single stem, you wrap it, and then you put it back over a stem again like that. You know, it doesn't have to hold it much. I don't do that because most of my stems that I work with normally are not strong and stiff stems like this. Most of my stems are actually really thin and really brittle. And if I was to pull on a single stem, it's just going to snap it off and it's going to break it. So I actually will grab it and break elastics. I'll actually grab it and, you know, wrap it a few times on onto the stems. So one thing to consider is it is fanned out like that. You can squeeze it in. I can squeeze it to move my elastics up the stem to get it to the point at which it then spirals out. I can re-spiral it out. Like you don't have to be too worried about when it's finished about squeezing it to work with it or to squeeze it to fit it into something. It will open up, right? Because the stems up at the top have that shape and that structure. There we go. One done. Three more to go. Even though I'm still working with the same kind of three flowers and then little bits, you can do a lot of different stuff based on what the little bits are. So the next bouquet that I want to do is kind of a boho style. I feel, you know, this is my bulk. This is what all the bouquets are going to be made out of. They're going to be made out of these spray carnations. But I feel like this color, this is going to pair really nicely with browns, right? So I have some of this dried flower stuff. So this is stuff that I can work with and I can add this in and it's going to completely change the look of what I'm working with because it's going to take it from, you know, this bright and blush as a contrast into kind of these moodier boho, boho look. Okay. So the first thing I'm going to work with, because yet again, I have no foliage. So I'm going to, I think I'm going to just keep to the dried stuff in this instead of have foliage, but this is too big. If I put this in because it's only a $20 bouquet, it's going to overwhelm. I'm only going to be adding a few things. This is too bulky. So I'm going to break this down and I'm going to make this a more reasonable size piece to be having in the bouquet. So I'm going to start with this, you know, and this is going to be my first stem. This is going to be the center of the bouquet. The next thing I'm going to work with is I have these orangey foliage bits, and then I'm going to start spiraling these in. My focal is going to be these white mums. So I'm going to have them sitting up a little bit, spiraling them into the bouquet, and then we're going to fill it in with these mums that we're going to use and everything. Put three of them in. It's not done. It doesn't have, it doesn't have enough, but I didn't, because I'm working with these dried pieces for this boho look, I didn't, I'm not going to spiral them in. I'm actually going to spike them in because I want to be a little bit, a little bit more intentional about where they go. One of the nice things about the spiral, if you can get a shot of this here, you put it down and it holds itself together pretty well. So these are too big. I want them smaller. So I'm just taking off the tips. Now they're going to be a little bit more reasonable to work with. I want some boho magic. So we're going to stick this grass in. We're just going to weave it in, put a few of these on the side. Now I want to bring in the browns, break up some of that first dried piece that we started by sticking these in. So this bouquet is done. I'm happy with it. It has the soft brown boho palette that I was going for, but it needs a little bit of primping. What has kind of happened as I worked with it is I'm not happy with where this focal, like this is my main flower. So what I'm going to do, no, it's all tied in. Okay. So I want them higher. Now this is what I want, right? Now it's sitting up a little bit more. You see the flower a little bit more. I'm happy. I'm happy with that. You want to be a little bit careful about using dried flowers with fresh flowers because you need to make sure that the fresh flowers are in water or else they're not going to, they're not going to stay fresh for very long. And the dried flowers, they can get a little, you know, they can start to get scummy and gross when they get sad in the water. There we go. I have absolutely nothing at my house, but I picked this maple stem and I love stuff like this. I love like weird, interesting textural bits. So I'm going to start with this. We've hoarded the greenery. We've used hardly any greenery. So let's use a little bit of greenery now. Put one of those in there to start us up. Oh, got a cat here. Cat coming to drink all of our water. Let's stick one of these carnations into the center. So you can see I'm not spiraling yet, right? And that is because this is like the first piece. And then once I start adding stuff on, then I'll start spiraling. Let's put like a little bit of this in. We're going to spiral now. We're going to add this and now we're going to be spiraling. This other piece of greenery, throw that in. Put these in, placing it. I'm not feeling this one. But you know what, even when you're not really, when it's not doing what you want it to do and it's not jumping out, when you just keep adding stuff into it, it eventually comes together. Spiral them in. That looks pretty. Put some of these on the outside. I only have two of these. So, you know, rather than doing the three and doing the collar, you know, I'm doing it just on either side, right? And it kind of opens up, you know, when it goes into a vase, it'll, you know, kind of be on the side or the person could take it off and they could put them both at the back to kind of change it. But, you know, this piece, you know, I think it's still, it adds some nice texture. Okay, done. I started with $80 worth of flowers here and they were really cheap flowers. So, you know, I've made three, what I would call $20 bouquets. I have enough left over that I could probably make two more of the same size. But I'm going to make one for me. I'm hoarding this protea for myself. What I normally do is if I have a focal, I like start with the focal. But I'm not going to do that this time because what, how I'm going to put the focal in is at the end. I'm going to put it in exactly the spot that I want. What I'm going to start with this time is how I normally start my market bouquets, which is I start with a piece of greenery. I like having a piece of greenery in the center. And then I usually will grab, you know, something that's kind of like a focal, focal flower-ish to be in the center of the bouquet. Then we will add in three of these and now we'll start. Now we'll start spiraling. This is going to be the one in the thumbnail, right? Because that's the reason why everyone always makes those massive, you know, $200 bouquets because they look so showy and so great. So this will be our $60 bouquet. Now we're going to start adding in our extra stuff. Put some of these little roses and just start spiraling. Spiraling it all in because my goal here is just to use up everything that's left. Roses, a couple of these peachy roses. I'm going to put the berries in. I love these. So I'm actually going to set them up a little bit higher. I want them in the center of the bouquet. Put a flower in. It's going to be a big bouquet. I know it's going to be a big fatty. It's going to look incredible on our table. It's been a long time since we've had fresh flowers. I find when I make like a larger bouquet, I start it up higher and then they slowly, the pieces come down lower so that when I put it into the vase, it's a bit more of like a mound when it's finished. These roses. We're going to use the greenery. This isn't going to be visible if it's wrapped. It's going to be kind of sitting down. It's only this that's going to be visible when I display out. But when I put it into the vase, you know, this, I'm going to see it. You don't need something. It's this magic. Right into the center. Sitting up. That. We're about to head into our fourth year of farming on Red Roof Family Farm. But I can still look back to that first year, that first season of farming when I first picked my first flush of flowers and I brought them in and I didn't know what to do with them. And I was really intimidated about what it was going to take to put them together in an attractive way. Now, you know, last year I probably made a thousand bouquets. I feel fairly confident when I go to handle the flowers, when I go to put them into some sort of an arrangement. And the main reason is that I'm using these basics that I've shown you. It really is just spiraling in the stems, putting them in on an angle so that they're open, beautiful and full looking. It's about considering the different sizes of the flowers, the different textures of the flowers and the different shapes of the flowers, you know, and then a little bit of what colors do you like? I'm not a pro. I'm not a professional. You know, I'm just someone who's put together a lot of flowers. And honestly, guys, if I can do it, so can you. So if the only thing you leave with is a little bit more confidence, then I feel good at least.