artificial flowes

Hubby has spent three of the last four weekends away from home – 2 “Boys Weekends” and a conference.

I might have felt a tad neglected and over-worked – so I told him he’d better send me flowers.

Serious flowers:

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floral centerpiece, floral centrepiece, faux flowers, artificial flowers, silk flowers, peonies, pink floral arrangement — *Source: Instagram @alisonmiksch – click image to be taken to her site.*

I actually texted that image to his phone. (Subtle is NOT an option with Hubby)

And he did. He sent me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers that looked nothing like this…

mainly because this would have cost hundreds of dollars and would have died in a week.

I did look into having a professional artificial florist create something like this for me – and again, the price tag was in the hundreds – so even with the prolonged life span, it was still waaaaay out of budget.

So I enjoyed my beautiful arrangement and catered to trying to make it last a full two weeks (not quite), but it got me to thinking;

I have a black thumb, I can’t even keep succulents alive
real flowers are gorgeous, but so short-lived and
artificial flowers have come a long way ….

So I decided I’d attempt to make my own artificial flower arrangement!

We received this gorgeous pedestal bowl as a wedding gift and I have filled it with pinecones at Christmas and decorative balls throughout the years, but nothing really did it justice.

I decided this was going to be my base and headed off to Michael’s to pick up some stems to create my own artificial flower centrepiece.

I chose my greens close in hue, but also to have a “puffy” and a “dangler” to fill out my creation.

The “puffy” were two bunches of artificial magnolia leaves:

and the “danglers” were one bunch of what look like ferns?

I know the original inspiration photo is in pinks and corals, but when I was at Michael’s I changed my mind….

these blue peonies were too cute to resist (I’m in a blue-phase lately).

and that also lent well to a couple of blue hydrangea.

I thought my artificial flowers might need a third colour thrown into the mix, so I went with an off-white. I’m not sure what these flowers are, but one added height (“sticky-uppy-ness) and the other added fullness.

I purchased a half-sphere of floral foam:

and set to work cutting all the bunches of my artificial flowers. I cut each stem as long as possible, so basically down to the nub, with wire cutters. (the peonies and hydrangea were single stems)

I have taken a couple of those “flower arranging” classes that florists offer around Christmas time, but all total they amount to about 1 hour so I won’t say I’m anywhere near an expert, but I did start with one tip I learned there; start with the greens.

I inserted my magnolia branches at 12, 3, 6 and 9 on the sphere,

and then staggered the remaining branches to minimize any gaps.

Then I tucked in my “danglers” (aka ferns) to give it some interest.

At this point you can still see some of the green floral foam peeking here and there, but don’t worry – there are still 5 large flowers and then several small stems to tuck in which will cover most of that up.

First my beautiful blue peonies:

and then my artificial hydrangea.

The last step in creating your DIY centrepiece from artificial flowers is to add in your accent – in this case the whites:

The “sticky-uppies” give it some height and interest and the other whites fill in the gaps.

Not too shabby eh?

Okay, so maybe you’re not big on blue – the great thing about this is that I only really need to change out 5 stems to give it a different look:

Oops, missed that blue on in the back – forgot that the mirror would give me away. lol

I’m thinking this may get sunflowers come fall?

I’m not sure you want to know the total spent on this – these are considered “Fall” flowers, so they weren’t on sale at Michael’s – but suffice it to say it was LESS than Hubby spent on the real flowers below and it will last so much longer!