Beautiful guthipusa pearl neckset /pearls//

When making a flower arrangement there are an endless number of combinations of flowers, foliage, branches, things that can come together to make a beautiful design. When you're getting started it can feel overwhelming because there's so many choices. In today's video I'm going to share with you the six elements that I use in just about every design I make, how they're used, and what they add to an arrangement. Once you know these six elements you can use those at home to make pro style arrangements anytime. My name is Ellen Frost. I'm the owner of Local Color Flowers and I've been a florist for 17 years. I'm building a community of flower nerds online. Today I'm going to show you how I make an arrangement with these six elements that I use in every single arrangement. The first element that I include in all of my arrangements is foliage. So what is foliage? It's any leafy element that it could have flowers on it or it could just be leafy. It is sometimes green, sometimes gray, sometimes dark red. There's all different kinds of colors of foliage, all kinds of colors and textures. I like to include foliage in all of my arrangements for a couple of reasons. First because it adds a natural element to the arrangements. If you look in the garden you'll always see lots of leafy greens along with your flowers. So I like to take my cues from nature and add leafy greens into my arrangements. Today I'm using some eucalyptus and some dusty miller. The other thing that foliage does for an arrangement is help to create an armature or a grid inside your vase to hold the larger flowers in place. So when I'm putting my foliage in, I'm actually putting it in at an angle so that when I put my larger flowers in they have something to hold on to, something to help them stay in place. So foliage adds color, texture, but it also acts as a mechanic for my design. The second element that I like to include are line flowers. Line flowers are just as they sound. They grow in a line. The flowers bloom up the stem so they really have a line shape. I like to include these in all of my designs for a couple of reasons. One, because they add some height to my design. I like to let flowers do what they do naturally. So I'm letting the line really show off and be a little bit taller in the arrangement. These line flowers also help to create the shape of the arrangement. So as I'm thinking how tall do I want it to be, how wide do I want it to be, I can use these line flowers to help create that shape. All right, so the stars of the show of every arrangement is a focal flower. And right now I'm going to be using peonies, which I feel like are the ultimate focal flower. They're big. They attract attention. You can't stop looking at them. You want to smell them. Focal flowers really act as the star of the show in your arrangement. And so I want to put those in next so that they have enough room to really shine in the arrangement. You don't want to put them in last because you're going to have to squeeze them in really. So I'm going to put these in a little bit early and I'm going to be putting these at some different heights. Peonies in particular are an interesting focal flower because they're going to continue to open in the vase and they really need a lot of room. So I don't like to crowd them. I really want them to have plenty of room to open up. And I'm also just helping them open up a little bit so that I can see how big they actually are going to be. The next element that I like to include in my arrangements is some filler flower. Now filler flower is going to do just what it says. It's going to fill in the gaps. If you have any holes in your arrangement, any places where you need to have some color or some texture, filler flowers are going to be great. They're small, usually delicate flowers, and oftentimes there'll be many blooms on a single stem. So this is status and you can see that on this one bloom there's lots of little little flowers. So these are a great way to fill in space if you need a little bit of color or texture in certain places. Now I sometimes like to have some negative space in my arrangement, so not crowding everything really tightly, but I do like to make sure that I have color and texture in all of the spots that anybody is looking at an arrangement. So I'm going to add a little bit of status throughout the arrangement just to add some interest. Next element that I like to include in all my arrangements is a secondary flower. And a secondary flower is a flower that's really pretty, really awesome, like ranunculus, but it's not quite as big or as showy as a focal flower and it's not quite as small and insignificant as a filler. So today I'm going to use some ranunculus. Secondary flowers can add color and texture to your arrangement. They are not going to be the stars of the show, but they definitely are going to add some interest, some color to all of your arrangements. And you can use one type of secondary flower, like today I'm only using ranunculus, but if you wanted to use two or three types of secondary flowers that would be great too. I think the more texture and the more interest that you have in an arrangement, the more it keeps somebody's attention. The last element that I like to include in my arrangements is what I call bits and pieces. These are the final touches of your arrangement that are very small. A lot of florists might skip over this element because they might think they don't want to spend the time or the effort or the money to add these final details. But I really believe that the bits and pieces are the things that really can set your arrangement apart and can get people really curious about your arrangement. Because these are often little pieces, little interesting flowers or foliages that people haven't seen before. Especially when using local flowers there's a lot of these elements available. So today I'm using orlea, which is a very whimsical kind of wild flower looking flower that I'm just going to add in here at the end. And I've heard from a couple people this week about how much they enjoyed having orlea in their arrangements and how unique and interesting it looked. So I'm just going to add a little bit of this in and I want to make sure that it doesn't get lost because these are going to be just small little last sort of final touches on your arrangement. So I want to make sure that they stick out a little bit. So these are the six elements that I use in every arrangement and I think that if you can use those at home, you're going to have great success in making pro style arrangements for yourself.