Calla Lily Corsage DIY: Budget Prom & Wedding Tutorial

Hi, and welcome to another Floral Share video. Today we are going to make a fantastic corsage that is going to cost a fraction less than if you went shopping for flowers at your local flower shop. This little guy that I picked up at the grocery store, it is a fantastic solution for those that don't have flowers readily available, and you've got someone that says, Mom, I'm going to prom, I need a corsage. This is going to be your go-to. It is elegant and charming, a little bit different, and you can pick it up at grocery store, your big box stores, and your local nursery. I can't wait to share this idea with you. Let's get started. Supplies you'll need for today's project are, of course, let's start with our Calla lily plant. This is the star of the show. They come in so many different colors. Of course, today we've done a classic white. They come in different shades of purple, pink, yellows, even sometimes a little bit of a peachy if you're lucky. This is where we're going to start. The next you'll need is some greenery. Now, really try to focus on more DIY than what you would get at a flower shop because, you know, we're thinking outside the box with what materials to come up with for this corsage, and I went foraging in the yard because, of course, I love that part, so I decided to pick up some of my lovely nandina. I thought it was delicate and really pretty. I have some gardenia. This really surprised me. It was so great even in this cold weather. I have some variegated boxwood. I thought this would be charming. I think it might be a little too delicate in the end, and then I thought, what the hell? Let's just chop up some azaleas, see what that does. So really what I'm trying to get across is use what you have, and let's say you have an apartment or you just don't have access to greens. You can pick up some artificial leaves from Amazon or some of your craft stores. There's several different shades of green, white, gold, silver. Of course, this would be really charming to match your ribbon with these. I absolutely love this gold with a little bit of a gold shimmer. Think outside the box when you're doing this. Use what you can find. So you'll also need some wristlets. I picked up this pearl one because I thought it would be really interesting and fun and have a little bit more weight. And after playing around, I decided to go with Mr. Classic plain old wristband. You'll need some wire, some fine gauge. You're looking for 26 to 24. If you get tipped to the 22 gauge, it's just too heavy and it's not going to work well with your calla lily stems that are on the fragile side. So you'll also need some floral tape. I like a tape that is sticky and waxy as opposed to a little slippery, and that's just one of those that you're going to have to kind of play with with what you can get your hands on. You'll also need some floral glue. Oasis is my favorite. There are others. I just find that this is very fast drying. A little plate or dish of some kind to put your glue on. Of course, some nice ribbon scissors for your ribbon. My classic snips, I don't go anywhere without those. And then just because I can't help myself and I love a little cha-cha, something different, I love to put a little flufla. These have a little tool. I also have some that have little pearls or rhinestones. We'll see how far we get with that. And then last but not least, if this is for prom or for homecoming, you'll want to present these in something, some kind of little bag or a box. Think about a pastry box, works really well for delivery purposes. So I know that sounds like a lot, but this is classic what you're going to need for a corsage. Let's go. To start this off, you want to begin with making a bow. Now, I do have a video on this, and we'll put a link down below. Making sure that your little tails are open, remember that. The next thing is that you'll want to prep your wristlet. And what I mean by that is we're going to tape the edges so that you don't have any metal touching the skin. Again, I have a video where I've shown you how to do exactly that. Now, I was in the craft store and I picked up this wristband. I thought it would be fun. But once I kind of got into it, I really realized that this is way too much for your average DIY beginner, very, very fiddly. And then the cuff was really quite big and kind of bulky, and I didn't like it for your average homecoming prom. Maybe it'd be fine for a wedding, but I don't know. I wasn't that thrilled with it. So that's why I decided to stick with your average plain Jane wristband. The next thing is we're going to choose our calla lilies. What I'm looking for are ones that are clean and neat and don't have any little bits that are taken out of them. These are pretty clean. This is one that's got a little notch at it, and that's what I mean. I'm not going to use that. I don't want anything too big. That is, I think, a nice little moderate size. Remember, this is going on the wrist, and you don't want to take up half the arm. And then let's get one more. Now, these are two different sizes. I have one that's smaller than the other. Of course, the smaller one's going to go on top, and then the large one on the bottom. That's pretty much what you're going to be doing for your corsage. The reason that we put the larger one on the bottom is because we want that weight towards the end of the hand, and you want that delicate flow up towards the elbow. It just has a nicer balance. Any time you put something heavier up here, it just ends up looking clunky. So let me show you how we're going to wire these next. Now, this is a 26 gauge. That means that there's 26 of these little pieces per inch. And the flesh on these calves are very, very delicate. And if we go too heavy, it's just going to snap them right in half. That's why I said I thought 22 was just a little bit too heavy. Let me get some eyeballs on so I can see what I'm doing. Okay. What we're going to do is make a crosshatch, and it's basically going to cage our calla lily right up, not quite at the neck, maybe just a little bit below. And what caging does is going to give it some extra strength. And then I can also manipulate the ends. Okay, you can see that it's crossed now. And we're going to fold those down very gently. I probably could have cut that beforehand. I'm notorious for waiting. Now, this does have a little bit of sticky, and if that bothers you, you can just take a little bit of a towel and just kind of tap that off a little bit. It's just kind of like this natural little milky sap that cow lilies have. Okay, now that we have caged him, we will take our tape. To start, we're going to give him a pull. That releases the wax, and then we're going to spin. We're spinning the flower. We're not spinning the tape. This allows it to lay nice and flat and smooth, and it's just a pull and twist, pull and twist, and you're done. And you can see how nice and smooth and clean that is. That's what you're looking for. Let's do the second one. Okay, same thing right below. We'll cage him. Now, this I've crunched up that end a little bit when I pulled it off. Just going to clean that up so that I don't have kind of like this little twist. What that will do is lay kind of a knotted bit up at the top, and you want it to be nice and clean. So again, pull and twist, and you're done. So that is all we're going to do for prep work with that. Let's add some greenery to this. Now, I know in my other videos, what I had done is I attached the bow first. With a cow lily, we're actually going to attach the cow lilies to the wristlet, and then the bow last. We're going to build with our more delicate, the smaller one first. And I have these Nandina. I think they're really very, very sweet. And like I said, I also had the gardenia from the yard. Let's start with the gardenia first and just see what that looks like. Okay, what I want to do is kind of nestle this in. And actually, it doesn't have to be just one piece of, one type of greenery. In fact, adding two adds a lot more interest. Ooh, yeah, I like that. I think that that's pretty. That kind of elongates everything. It's very nice. So what I've done is I've grouped this right below the little neck here. And again, I'm going to tie him off, same technique, pull, and then twist. I do not want these greens to carry all the way down. I want this wire to be open so that I can manipulate this. I cut that in there and there, and capture it, and then all the way down. And then we'll do the bigger one. You can see how quickly this is actually coming together. Let's do this one. And I'm just trying to find a little piece that I find interesting. It's going to give me a little bit of length again. Same thing. OK, so this is balanced mostly here. I think what I'm going to try to do is get this to be on this side. So when I group him, I'll have greens on this side, and then I'll have greens on that side, just so that it's got some nice balance. And if you notice, there is no baby's breath, no fillers. This is just going to be the calla lily, and then whatever foliage you might be able to find. Very graceful, very simple. Now we're going to assemble the top ones up here. This one's down below. And I'm going to capture the two of them right down here with my tape. OK, do I like this? This is where it's nice that I have the wires that I can kind of manipulate this a little bit here and there to get them to line up the way that I want. OK, so now we're at the point of assembly. If you look at your wristlet, it's got these little feet, if you will. That's what we've always just called them, our little feet. What we're going to do is, this is a little tricky, but you can do it. You're going to take the backside and line them up, and you're going to capture those little feet right in between your flower. And then press them in. It's not hard, just kind of you think, oh my god, I'm going to break him. You're not. You can see I'm just going to smush him right in there. And then you're going to capture them right down here with this bottom one, too. This is kind of old school. I mean, this is truly how we used to do this before everybody did glue. We did everything with wires. It was crazy. OK, now what I want to do is cover this up right here. Again, we're always trying to cover up our mechanics. Even though I'm going to put ribbon on it, I'm going to cover this. And the reason why we do wire and not glue on these is just that the weight of the flower is really a little bit too much. You don't want somebody, you know, you're dancing, you're having a good time. You don't want somebody to knock it and pop that flower off that glue base. Like the little baby roses and some of the other little wildflowers and things, they can hold up to the glue because they just really don't have that much weight. And the wires really give this much more secure base. So I neglected to tell you that you do need to wrap your stem. OK, so again, nothing more than just that pull and twist. Sometimes it can be a little bit more fiddly because the wire is so delicate. But just keep pressing your tape into itself, and it will make a nice clean little wrap. OK, now you can do one of two things. You can line your bow up off to the side up here or put it a little bit more towards the bottom. I think with this particular one, we're going to go off to the side a wee bit. And then I'm going to attach that bow just like I've done everything else, just a little bit of wire. Now, you don't want to go all the way down to the end. Why? Because if you go down, you're going to end up this big stump. And I never thought that that looked very good. Back in the day, sometimes people would do this kind of like pigtail wrap. And I just always thought that that was just not nice. Who wants that on their arm? So what we're going to do is we're going to take these little guys and give them a snip here, here, and here. And you know what I need? I need like a little pen or something. Let me scrounge in my collection for just a sec. OK, a pencil is going to do me. All I'm going to do is just kind of give it a little bit of a wrap. And I don't know. It's just a little bit more delicate, I think, a little bit nicer on the wrist. OK, so basically, this is it. Can I leave this alone? Oh, hell no. You know I've got to add something to this. I just need some little pearls, some little rhinestones, a little something. So let me get my glue out and get my little flooflaws. Let's see which ones we like. OK, so I do have these little guys that have the little tool in them and a little bit of pearls. And I do think that that could be really cute up in through here. And then I've got my other little guys that are some pearls. Now, you want to edit yourself. I mean, a little bit of cha-cha is fine. Don't feel like you need to throw everything in your arsenal in here. Just a little bit of a touch here and there. It's all these things you usually need, because otherwise, it's kind of a distraction. Let's see. I think I kind of like the little pearl, just like that. This is where the glue can come in and be handy, a bit of glue. Guys, a quick trick on the glue. Do a little bit of Vaseline on the threads, and this puppy will open up every single time. Otherwise, you may be using your teeth, your wrench, trying to get that thing off. How do I know? Years of forgetting to put the Vaseline on my tube. It's just needed a little quick twist to secure it. I'm going to snip it off tight. The neat thing, too, is that these little guys can be edited. This is so long, I could cut this in a couple of different lengths if I was using something shorter. Give him a good little dollop in here and slide him right in. Oh, so cute. I think we'll do one more up here, maybe. So this was so quick and easy, guys. I think I might do a quick bonus round and do a boutonniere. You're going to be surprised at how fast that goes. And there we go. So stinking cute, all from a calla lily. I can't believe it. This is how this started. That's how it ends. It's fantastic. All righty, guys, we've finished our corsage, and I promised you a matching boutonniere. This is going to be so fast, you're not even going to believe it. Don't blink. We're going to pick our prettiest. I love this one right here. Let's give this little guy a snip. We've got our 26-gauge wire. Going to do our crosshatch. And we do that to cage him in and give him some strength, because these are fragile, fragile flowers. We bent it down. It's completely caged. We're going to do our tape, give it a pull, and spin. And we're going to do a clean wrap all the way down. Pick your favorite foliage. I've got some nandina here. I think we'll do more than just one. I just like how that looks. Yeah, just like that. It's great. Again, capture it, and then pull it and twist. And then you'll want to give yourself about an inch to an inch and a half down, snip. Guys, don't forget the pin. Fantastic.