FR Presents_ Statement Urn with Tulips by TJ McGrath

Hi guys, I'm TJ from TJ McGrath Design. Welcome to my house. We're here today with Florist Review and I'm going to demo for you how to make a statement urn that you can use for when you sell your bride, possibly a escort card table. I love this urn. It's great. It's going to make something really giant in my very tiny house. Um, it's also great if there's like a place in the venue where they may need some other kind of decor or just a statement piece. Um, and today I'm going to be designing with American grown tulips from imported European bulbs. And I'm really excited because I love tulips. Um, I had like 10 that come up in my garden every spring and, uh, the deer get them before I ever get a flower. So, so I love when my farmers, my local farmers are growing tulips because it's one of my favorite flowers to work with. Um, I've kind of already preset up my days, but I'll just go through the steps one more time. I have puttied my pin frog to the bottom, which I'll need in there once I set my first couple of branches. And then I just took some chicken wire. It's probably, I don't know. I always count the little hexagons. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. It's probably about 12 inches by 12 inches. And then to help me keep my stems in place, I just kind of take it from corner to corner. Um, and we may have some company with my dog. He just took a, took a lie down in front of me here. So I go corner to corner there. And then I go corner to corner here, just kind of bending them in. And I don't add any other wire or anything to it. I just use the wire of the chicken wire. Um, yeah, the chicken wire itself. And I just kind of wrap it all together. So hold in those hinges. The beauty of this coated chicken wire is it doesn't cut your feet, your fingers, your feet, doesn't cut your fingers, um, nearly as much as just the straight metal. And it's much easier to sort of bend into whatever shape you want. And then you would squish that into your vase. Um, I then take the added precaution of using, I like the clear tape, the Oasis waterproof clear tape. And I just put a layer over. I'm not even that, uh, fussy, although I just did cut it. Usually I just rip it. Lots of people will make an X. I feel like I'm pretty secure in there. I'm not going to make the X because I don't want to give up design space. Pardon me. So I've just got one across and that's definitely going to hold my chicken wire in place. Um, so part of the recipe is this beautiful, gorgeous quince flowering quince. And I'm really only just going to use two stems because like I said, we're in my tiny house. Um, but I use them mostly to sort of set my shape and I just want to kind of make sure I get it in there and angle it into the frog. There you go. Good. All right. So I've got my first line going this way. So then I actually, a good tip is to take your, um, shears or whatever you're using, your pruners, slice up the stem. That's going to get some more water up into those buds. This is, really not fully bloomed yet. And hopefully by slicing up this stem, that way you're going to allow more water to get in there. I'm actually using the arm of the vase to help me sort of lock this guy into place where I want it. So I've definitely got a sort of angular, asymmetrical shape. It's one of the shapes that I really enjoy. The next thing I do is try to get out of the way of my own self. And I'm going to take a few pieces of, um, just any fern you can use. Any kind of greenery, lemon leaf would be good for this. It's a leather leaf fern, but if you could see what I'm doing, I'm just kind of popping it in there to accent the line I already created with my beautiful quince branches. I'm going to take a couple more. The beauty of a piece like this being for an event, um, is I don't have to make sure that every single stem is touching the bottom, getting in the water, because I can keep refilling this up until the day that I have to deliver it. And so even stems that are sort of floating at the top will be drinking. And yes, I did pre-water my vase. So I'm also just going to put one sort of accent piece there. I definitely design in a sort of front, I almost design two arrangements, right? I'll design the front and then I will spin it around and design the back. The other thing that makes this really kind of, in my mind, a statement piece is the fact that we're really sticking to just one flower variety in, um, I've got 50 tulips in five different shades of pink. So we're going to play with that and see how that all turns out. And then I picked up a little bit of a California wildflower, um, called, I think it's called Aristonium, which is really pretty. It's got a nice little arc to it and I'm going to just add in a piece or two of that too again to accent my shape a little bit. Now it's time for tulips. So I like to reflex all of the tulips, especially for event work. They only need to live for really as long as the event. Um, and they're really most beautiful. I find when you're reflexing tulips, it's best to let them drink for a couple of days. These were really super tight when I first got them. Um, and a couple of days later, they're nice and hydrated and ready to reflex. So you can see what I'm doing. I always set my first flower right at the lip of the vase. And I'm going to pair it with another one of the same color. And I'm going in kind of on an angle because I've got that pillow of chicken wire to help the stem from tipping downward. And I already like the way that looks. So I'm going to give them a third buddy, put it in from the middle, try to get a little bit more length and just angle it where you want. Now, a lot of folks will, we all know tulips grow, they grow to the light. A lot of folks will tell you, you can pop a pin through the neck there and that will help keep them grow and keep them from growing. I sliced them before with a razor. Honestly, I find that that's a hit or miss thing. So for an arrangement like this, I like to wait to possibly the day before the event so that the tulips are pretty much at the stage that I want them. And I don't have to worry about, you know, growing and becoming a completely different arrangement by the time I'm ready to install at the wedding. So I'm just kind of pairing my white, my bicolor parody tape tulip. I know I want to bring some of this white all the way around the back, which is why I chose the white quince, because I knew that this tulip would want a little bit of a white buddy, especially since I've got this super saturated, double gorgeousness. Now they tend to be a little bit softer and bendy after a few days, which I like because then I can kind of maneuver them to where I want. So now that I've got some preliminary in that, I feel like I'm kind of already mimicking my shape. I'm starting to think about the actual placement of the color and they're just all so beautiful that I almost want to kind of use them in clusters of color. I feel like that's really going to make the arrangement about the tulip rather than trying to mix them together and disguise them as a bunch of different flowers that they're not. It is an arrangement of, you know, up to 50 tulips, so I really want to highlight that. That is also really going to tell the statement story. Now I have really a whole lot going on. I'm going to take a break from the tulips for a second, but definitely I'm keeping in line with the shape that I had going on. I'm just obsessed with the way this smells. It's so sweet and yet earthy at the same time, if that makes sense. I eat chocolate and hot dogs and hamburgers, so I don't really know what herbs smell like, but I imagine they would smell something like this. I believe it's called erystonium, and I just want to add in a few more to give it a bit more texture. So I've got a pretty big arrangement happening here, and then in the recipe I included some of this laurel, which you can probably, right now in spring, it's very sort of bridal, and it's readily available at most of your wholesalers. I tend to clean it up a little bit. I actually pick mine up off the side of the road. I just like the fact that it's a little bit of a different texture in the greenery. I'm just gonna pop that in to bring some green up a little bit more, and then it's got this beautiful little white flower. I like where it's going. It maybe needs one or two more flowers, tulips kind of coming out here. I'm imagining it as a escort card piece, so it does need to be 360, so I will finish that out. That also makes a difference. Even if it was going against the wall, you'd still want to throw some flowers towards the back so it doesn't look like it's just chopped off or pasted up against a wall. But thanks for joining me, guys. Thanks for playing with these imported European bulbs grown here in America, and check back soon. You may see me again.