How To Make A Ladies Freesia Corsage For Special Occasion

Hello, welcome to Flower Juice. My name's John McDonald. And today we're gonna look at making a simple ladies corsage. And this is really quite a traditional one. What we're gonna use as our flower is this beautiful freesia. Now I've picked yellow just because it was the nicest of the freesia, but you could use any colour. So you can adapt this to whatever you're wanting. But freesia really is a very beautiful flower for a corsage. It's got a bit of a perfume and it really is a traditional choice. So let's see how to make a corsage. Okay, so the ideal thing is you want to lay everything out with what you need. So we're gonna need some foliage. I've got these little ivy leaves, which I find are really, really good. You can make them in advance, but we want a little bit of a contrast. So I've got a little bit of asparagus fern as well. Wires, we've got a rose wire. Now I've only got some thicker ones. So these are probably like a 0.26 gauge. You can get thinner. So like a 0.28 would be a little bit more flexible. If you need to use a stronger wire, then you can go down to 0.22. So basically the higher the number, the thinner the wire. Like this is on a reel and it's 0.32. So you can use them on the wire or you can use them on the reel or you can use them just like this. I find with wires that you might go to the supplier and they only have a certain one. So if you get totally caught up on using a particular one, you might find they don't have it. So essentially, if you want to make something thicker, what you can do is you can double it and that will give you more strength. So straight away, that's a stronger wire just by the fact that it's doubled. So that's one way to look at it. So we've got our leaves, we've got our wires and then we've got our freesia. Now I've just bought like a little bunch of freesia here. And what we need to do is we need to just go through it and see what we have. You also need to decide as well, is this a corsage for going on a lady's dress? Is this going to be a men's buttonhole? What is the actual purpose of it as well? So if you're only needing a few flowers, then don't take them all to bits. So like to me, this flower is finished and this one as well is a little bit soft. So I would rather use that bud knowing that it's really, really good. Same with this flower here. I'd rather just take that down to being the bud and I know it's really strong. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to wire these leaves. And all we're going to do is we're going to take a stitch through the back and just double it over and just one little twist. Now, the other thing we needed was some power film. So the power film is basically a seal that we can put on our flower. Now, we've got a bit of a heat wave going on at the moment. So if I get a little bit sweaty, then I'm sorry about that. So a little stitch through the back, down. We can even, we don't even need to do a stitch. If we just hold everything in line. So what I'm doing is I'm really just kind of pinching that so that the tape meets itself. And then as you twist, you're holding that. So let's just wire all these leaves first. Now, the traditional way of doing freesia is you would use some cotton, some cotton wool. You would go through the leaf, through the freesia head and pull the wire through with a little cluster of cotton caught in like a loop. So that's creating like a little padded area that will support the flower. But nowadays, freesia is much stronger than it used to be. The production of it is amazing. And I don't think we need to do that anymore. In fact, from a commercial point of view, you're really looking at how can I make a corsage in the most efficient way? So traditionally, we would wire every single flower, every single bud. It's very work intensive. Whereas from a commercial point of view or even a home point of view, you want to make something simply and easily that has the same effect. So if you don't need to wire every single flower, then that's fine. I mean, essentially, you're wanting to make something that sits nicely, shows off the flowers to best advantage and will last for the day for the event you're going to. So I wouldn't overstress it and I wouldn't overwork it. Sometimes things that are overworked by being pulled apart and put back together, it does look a little bit old fashioned and you have to kind of question, was it worth it? Now, I've probably got far too many leaves here, but it's nice to be able to pick and choose from a selection when you're making up. So as I'm pulling that, I'm pulling a little bit with this tape just to put a little bit of tension on it. And that's what stops it from unraveling. So essentially, the wire is creating a false stem. The tape that we use is creating a seal on the flower or on the leaf, pardon me. And then we can manipulate this in any way we want. And what we want to do with that stitch is take it more than halfway up. So about two thirds, between half and two thirds of the way up is the ideal. Now for this, I'm not even going to wire that because I don't think it needs it. If you wanted to wire it, it's just the same process basically, but we can just, this has got a strong stem. We can just tape that in as we go. A little bit of fluff there. And then we can have a look at our flowers. So you need to just lie them out and see what you've got. Decide which is going to be a nice top end for it. So I think we'll go with this. And all I'm going to do is I'm just going to go through this bud and that bud and down, and then a little bit. So I've caught this bud and this bud together in a loop. And then I can just tape that. So as we put this together, we're going to think about how we're going to make this. And you can reduce the amount of buds that are there as well. So that actually would go quite nicely there. So this is a little bit of a cheating corsage, but we're not going to stress about it because as I say, you just want to make it, you want to wear it, and you want to enjoy it. You don't want to be worrying too much about this, that, and the next thing, really. And the problem with Freesia is it's so delicate. It's so easy to, I'll just show you, to tear it like there's a little torn leaf. But the best way to do an individual flower is just to go through it, create a loop, and then slightly push it back up into the flower head. And then, I see, this is so, these wires are not my favourite. I actually prefer a slightly thinner wire. So let's do that again. Through the flower, this wire for me is a little bit thick. So I would prefer to use a 0.28. But that's an individual flower. And I want to make a few of these, actually. So this is the danger with a slightly thicker wire, is actually putting a twist on it. If you're going to be making a lot of corsages or you want to take your time, what you can do is put out a tea towel, give it a mist with some water. Then your flowers are also going to be keeping hydrated while you're working. So that's a good way to work. Now, I want to make this just quite plain, to be honest. But there's lots of things you could add in. So essentially, if you think about your corsage as like a multi-stemmed leaf and you're looking at it from behind, as long as you add in things in that framework, you can add in anything. So you could add in ribbon, other foliage. We could add in some funky things like crasspedia would be quite nice. You can even add in little pieces of like garniture, like little crystals, which are quite cute as well. These are ones from Oasis. It's like a little branched stem. So this is like a little bit like a pick, but with diamantes, which is quite nice. Right, I think what we need to do is we need to start making this. So what I'm looking for is a nice leaf that is good for the top. And then we're going to bring in one a little bit lower down. I'm just going to tape these together. Now, just check. My nemesis when it comes to making a video is the microphone. So many times I've started and it shows the battery is being fully powered. And then you get to the end of the video and you find that actually it decided to run out of charge halfway through. So as you can see, I made this little piece with two leaves. So like the top of a stem. And then it's just a case of working your way down and putting things in. So from the back, we're going to have like a branched effect. So I'll show you with another leaf. Basically just lie it to the side, bring it like this. So from the front, we've got like basically a branched effect. So then we just have to see how we want everything to sit in there. I think this is quite good. If you want it to have a very, very set look, then I would not use big heads like this, big end pieces. I would be more inclined to wire every single flower. And we're just working our way down. What I really need to do is find like a nice flower like this that's going to sit quite central. We actually got some like a mobile air conditioning unit. And I've had it running in this room for the last two hours and I've put it off because it's a bit noisy. But it's just amazing the heat that's coming back in. Where we are at the moment, we're getting about 34, 32 degree, well, anywhere between 30 in the morning up to about 35 in the day. And then at night, if you're lucky, it's been going down to 28. So it's been a bit warm. This is really the problem with freesia as well is they're bulky down here. And I quite like leaving that bulk on because I think that it basically helps the flower last longer. If you take that off, you're essentially just leaving the petals and it's more vulnerable to wilting and looking a little bit sad. See what you could add in, you know, pieces like this. This is actually a little bit of artificial greenery, but we can stick that in. And if we want to put in our little crasspedia, again, just making a loop. I'm not going to put in the crystals because actually I think the silver wire on them looks wrong for this. But you can see that you could make something really quite special with it. And what we're wanting to achieve is we're wanting to really achieve a nice line so that the spray, and it can have a bit of a curve in it because it will fit on your body with a bit of a curve as well. But yeah, we're wanting to create, not a triangular arrangement, but essentially that does give a nice look. So narrower at the top and coming down does look nice. So now you can keep going. You can make this longer if you want. I think there's a little bit of a danger if you do that it will become too heavy. So again, it's down to what type of dress. Is the dress going to be really thin? Is it going to be strong enough to support it? If it's going on a jacket, you've got much more support. If it's going straight on a dress, then possibly there's not the support there for a heavier corsage. And really with the freesia, we want it to be, to look light. It might not be light, but we want it to look light. So see what I've done there. I've taken these two buds and made like a little unit that can come in and fit into that area there. I'm putting a little bit of twist on there as well, but you don't have to. Gonna take this little bud. And because we've gone into that corner, I'm gonna come into this corner here. When I first started in Flora Street, everyone twisted their corsages. Now you don't have to. I find myself doing it because it was the way I was taught, but you can just keep everything parallel, which gives you a very nice look. And really that's what you're wanting is from the back for it to be nice and neat and from the front to be nicely balanced like a little design in itself. And I think just bring a little bit of the fern down there. So what I've done is I've just pulled it between that leaf and the stem. So if you're happy with your design, I think this is good. We can look at finishing it off. Now, you don't want any wires sticking out that are gonna catch the wearer or become a problem. If I was just wanting to do a straight end, I can just cut it straight like this, or you can do a bit of a twist on it as well. So you could do like a spiral, or you can do, do you know what? I'm just gonna do a straight strand because in some ways I think it's actually more classic. Another thing you can do is you can bind it off with some wool or some decorative wire just to finish it off. But the last thing you need then is a corsage pin. There are other ways to attach a corsage. And the pin is really the classic, classic choice for attaching to a dress. And there we go. That's our corsage. So there you go. This is a simple ladies corsage. We've really just used freesia with a little bit of highlights from the fern, the crasspedia, and this little bit of a feature as well. And it's quite a simple corsage, but I think it would look good on any sort of background. So any sort of material would look nice. So thank you for watching. We've got a new video every week and we'd love you to join us for our next design. So until then, take care. If you haven't already subscribed, then click here to subscribe and tap the bell and that'll give you a notification. But until then, we'll see you soon. Cheers. Bye for now.