Tricks of the Trade...Entrance Arrangements

One of the things I want to do with the blog is share some of the things that made my life easier in the floral business world.  Tricks of the Trade is a spot for me to share some of the little tricks and hints that helped create floral magic.

When trying to decide where to start I came across the following picture which reminded me of one of my favorite events.  Additionally I thought it would cover a couple of topics.

This picture is taken looking towards to the front door of the event space, Austin Seventy-One (beautiful).

Topics:

1. Entrance

2. Large Arrangements

3. Finishing out an Arrangement

4. Button Mum Balls

Topic 1:

Entrance - First, whether you are creating an entrance into your home or to an event space using floral 360degrees is the key.  I love round entrance tables, we had them in both of our stores.  If you have one in your home, use it!  Don't have a round table in your entrance, use even a round side table for the event, rent one from a party rental company, or you can pick up cheap round tables "in a box" from Target, Wal-mart, etc.  Just make sure to cover those, they are usually particle board, which is not attractive nor water tight.  Then you have a 360 entrance to your event.  If your table is large enough you can set appetizers around the arrangement, you could do place cards, take home gifts, etc.

Topic 2: 

Large Arrangements - It isn't about using a TON of flowers, it is mostly about the use of space.  Find yourself a large vessel to act as your base. (I love cylinders and rectangular clear vases.)  The key is not to place your flowers in this vessel, because usually they are pretty open and it would require a great deal of flowers, you want to build your arrangement in a separate container and place on top.  Floral Supply and Craft Stores sell plenty of useful items to fit the opening of the top of these vessel or to even balance across.  My favorite thing to use was a 10" diameter plastic plate with a 2" lip.  I filled with floral foam (soaked according to directions) and shaped it to mound up inside the plate.  Be sure to tape down your foam with floral tape or another adhesive that is water tight.  At this point you can start arranging.  Need help with flower choices, send me an email!  Just remember you need flowers to fill out length and depth.  So choose some long to create the frame, some dense or full to create the focus, and then fillers that fill in the space.  But not too much on the fillers, space is good.

Topic 3: 

Finishing out an Arrangement - Your vessel, if clear, will be empty.  So you need to fill it, you can even use colored water.  But my favorite things to use were Button Mum Balls, Curly Willow, Fruit, Candy, and even flowers.  Use your imagination or even the theme of your party.  You can fill it with ANYTHING.  If you get  stumped send me a message I will be happy to help with ideas.  Finally don't forget the table, either use it for staging of some of the things discussed in Topic 1 or add some floral on the table to "finish" out the arrangement.  Here we used willow balls, button mum balls and large leaves.

Topic 4:

Button Mum Balls - All you need is a wet floral foam ball (can be more expensive, once soaked is also heavy) or you can use a Styrofoam ball (works great, less heavy but won't give the flowers any water so best for short term use).  I would always paint the Styrofoam to match my mums but the key is to pack them so dense you can't see the base.  Clip off Button Mums at the base of the flower head if using Styrofoam or with 2cm of stem if using wet foam.  Then you place them on the ball using stick pins.  I would just use the plain silver headed ones.  You can also paint these so that they match and blend with the button mums.  With the wet foam the stem should stick in enough so that they hold with out pins but if not or if you are hanging the balls you can always pin the ones that are at risk of falling out.  Plus side of this, it is so unique and inexpensive...button mums are in the chrysanthemum family and are general on the inexpensive side.  Try a local floral market for deals.

Hope this inspires you to make a "grand" entrance to your next event!