How to Make a Wrapped Bouquet for Sale

Today I'm going to show you how to make a wrapped bouquet for retail sales either at a farmer's market or a farm stand or at your flower shop. I'm Ellen. I have been a florist for 15 years. I write a weekly newsletter all about my flower adventures and I'm building a community of flower nerds online. Today I'm going to show you how I make a wrapped bouquet that I sell here in my flower shop. So the first step I do to make a wrapped bouquet is I like to clean all of my stems and prepare them for making the actual bouquet. These are pretty clean. This is Sweet William. Any leaves that are in on the stem where I'm going to be holding it when I make the bouquet. So I'm just going to take off all these leaves, clean them off like that, and then as I'm doing this I'm going to lay my stems out in front of me so that I can see what I'm making. I like to have a good mix of line flowers, focal flowers, filler flowers. These are anemones and I'm going to leave this little collar right on there today. I think their collar doesn't bother me too much so these are pretty much ready to go. I have some purple and I also have some of these coral which are really pretty. This time of year anemones are one of our main sort of focal type flowers that we're using. I'm going to lay those out. Next I'm going to be using stock and this is a line flower. This one's a little bit small but you can see on this next one a line flower blooms up the stem as opposed to like an anemone that's like a single bloom. So I'm just going to make sure I clean off all of the leaves on these stems. These are pretty clean too. Make sure where I'm holding them in my hand is nice and clean because I don't want to have anything impeding on where I'm going to hold my hands. All right next this is ornamental cabbage. This could be considered a focal flower. Some of them are really big. I have sort of a mix of sizes that I'm going to be using today. If there's any like stray leaves or anything that's like looks a little wilty or bad I'll just rip those off. Next I'm going to be using these are cut poinsettias. This is the winter rose poinsettia. They're called early red. That's the variety and I'm going to leave a lot of these leaves on because they are really connected pretty closely to the red bracts and I don't want to take any of those bracts off. So I'm just going to clean those a little bit and then next I have snap dragons and this is another line flower. So a flower that grows up the stem. These are really long so I'm going to make sure I clean them and I'm going to trim them just a little bit now. Let's put these in here. These snaps are grown indoors in a greenhouse. They're grown hydroponically by a flower farm called Flowers by Bowers. They are not too far from here and they grow in troughs of perlite which is a growing medium and then they're watered and fed through a computer system. So every one of our farmers is unique and different all different sizes and shapes. All right and then let's see I'm going to use a few these are carnations. These come from Hendrix flowers. They are our only grower who has carnations. So I'm going to clean these up lay those down here. I love carnations. I know that carnations are not very popular and I do think they get a bad rap but carnations are really pretty. They're very long lasting and if you get the heirloom varieties which we get from Hendrix they are fragrant as well. So I'm going to make sure those are nice and clean and then lastly I'm going to put in some tulips. So I'm going to take off these outer leaves of the tulips and I want to be careful as I'm peeling them back because on occasion peeling them back can sort of break the stem. So I want to just be careful as I'm peeling them back. If you'd prefer to use a clippers you could use a clippers too. So I'm just make sure those are nice and clean and you can see that my tulips are just coloring up. They're not in full color and they're definitely not open. Really the best harvest stage for tulips is in this just coloring up stage so that they will color up in the vase. So you know and they'll color up quickly just within a day or so but you really this is really going to give you the longest vase life that you can with the tulips. All right I've got a few more sweet William they're pretty much clean. Take off a few more of these leaves just to make sure they're nice and clean. All right so I've got everything laid out. To make my bouquet I have all my flowers laid out in front of me. Everything's been cleaned so they're ready to go and I'm going to start with a focal flower or a flower that has a pretty strong stem. I like to start with something that has a sturdy stem so that that can be sort of the base of my bouquet. So I'm going to be holding in my non-dominant hand so I'm right-handed so I'm going to be holding it with my left hand and I'm going to be placing the flowers with my right hand. So every time I place a flower I'm going to do a cross just like this so cross over the flowers. Once I put one on I'm going to turn my bouquet just about a quarter turn. Then I'm going to put my next stem in stem in just at that same angle and then I'm going to give it a quarter turn. So every time I place my flower it's going to be at that angle and then the quarter turn. You can do this one stem at a time or if you get comfortable and you want to do it two stems at a time you can do it two stems at a time. So I'm mixing between my focal flowers, my line flowers, and then my filler flowers. I want to have a good mix of shapes and sizes so you can see I'm still doing my crossing. I do that every time. Every time I place and then turn and I start back at the beginning and I'm making sure that I'm watching that my line flowers are going to be a little bit taller. I'm going to pop those out a little bit so that they are easy to see in my arrangement. I don't want everything to be all at the same level necessarily. So still placing and turning, placing and turning, and this does I'm going to say like feel awkward when you are getting started but the more you do this the easier it will become and the easier it'll feel. So this takes a little bit of practice but don't be afraid to get your hands dirty and get in there and practice. So one more time I'm going to go back with my poinsettias, my stock, tulips, and my snap dragons. So there I did a couple at a time. I usually do try to do a couple at a time just to make it go a little bit faster but like I said once you're comfortable you can do more than one at a time. It's getting pretty full. My hand is getting you know it's pretty full here. If you want to take a little break and do a little trimming just to trim off some of that weight that'll help your hand feel a little bit a little bit better. All right so I'm placing and now I'm going to just be filling in a little bit with these extra these extra stems. Same thing and you can do you can make adjustments as you go. You can do it as you're as you're going or once you're finished. The higher up on the stems you hold the bouquet the tighter the bouquet is going to be. The lower down on the stems that you hold it the looser it's going to be. So for wrapped bouquets I do do them pretty pretty compact because they are going to get wrapped up. All right so this is these are the end of my stems here. So I'm just going to take a look. Looks pretty good. I do want to adjust this one point setup because it looks like it's like to have them in sort of a triangle here. It looks like one got a little too close. So now you can make adjustments. You can pull things out like these snap dragons here. I want to pull out a little bit. Sweet William can stay down a little. I'll keep pulling these pretty things out. All right and then I'm going to just do another trim so everything's nice and even. That's my bouquet. Now that I've got my bouquet made I'm going to rubber band it and I use just a regular rubber band and I try to find a sturdy stem like this cabbage stem is pretty sturdy and I'm going to rubber band it a little bit differently than regular. I'm going to put a rubber band around this main stem and then I'm just going to wrap it around and then back onto that sturdy stem and what this allows me to do is if I want to add something later or I want to adjust something it's very easy for me to just undo it put something in take something out and then wrap it back up rather than put it on like you would a regular rubber band twisting and turning it several times. So now I have it rubber band it's nice and sturdy. I'm going to still give it another trim so that the stems now that they're rubber banded are even okay nice and even then I'm going to wrap in craft paper. So if you look at like TikTok or Instagram you'll see people doing crazy wraps for their bouquets you know cellophane tissue paper craft paper we use just recycled you know recyclable craft paper that comes on a roll you can cut it to fit the size that you want. So I cut it in this or I fold it in this sort of two mountain peak sort of shape and then I lay my flowers right down in the middle of the two mountain peaks and the rubber band is right about at the edge of the paper and then I'm just going to take one two and then staple it. I do do two staples and then I always put a business card on because people are going to be leaving your shop or leaving the farmer's market or leaving your farm stand and you want to use any opportunity you can to market your business so that as people are walking around they'll see this card and ask somebody where did you get those flowers and they'll be able to tell them. So I've got it wrapped up and ready to go.