Fall Centerpieces (Part 1) - Prepping Floral Containers

Recently, my Husband's parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a dinner party.  Not only did I get the honor of putting together their floral centerpieces, but I got to spend a couple hours wandering around Hobby Lobby with my MIL (that's short for Mother-In-Law in case you were wondering 😊)

So now I'm taking a bit of a break from the mermaid birthday party to share how you can create fall centerpieces just like these.  Don't worry, I'll still share how I made those clamshell cookies and jellyfish lanterns, but for today read how to prep containers for your own floral designs:

Supplies

For this party I was making five separate floral arrangements.  That means we needed five containers (the square glass vases you see here), floral foam and something to cover up the foam - my MIL chose a combination of satin ribbon and burlap.

Do you have to use floral foam?  Nope, it's all up to you, the arrangements you are making and the overall look you are going for.  Since I was using artificial flowers and wanted the arrangements to be protected from jostling around (more permanent) I opted to go with foam.

You could certainly fill your container with small stones or marbles to help keep your stems in place or not worry about it at all and leave everything up to the Universe 😁  However, the shorter the container means the greater the likelihood that once placed, the stems are going to shift or fall out completely.  This is because the balance between the amount of stem available and the larger (heavier) head of the flower is off and they like to tip over.

Note:  This is true whether you are using artificial or fresh flowers, but make sure that if you do go with the foam option, you use the right kind of foam.  For the artificial flowers in this post I used styrofoam.  Fresh flowers, however, need a soakable floral foam.  This is foam that (once soaked according to directions) provides a water supply for the flowers and keeps them fresher longer.  Both kinds of foam can be purchased at your local craft store.

Bonus Tip:  Need styrofoam but only have the fresh flower foam available to you?  Wrap that dry, dusty, crumbly brick of foam up tightly in plastic wrap and proceed as you would with styrofoam.  It's a little less sturdy than styrofoam, so you'll need to be careful, but it will get the job done 😉

Moving on...

Cutting the Foam

Sometimes you can find styrofoam pre-cut into the size you are needing and sometimes you can't.  We could have chosen 'bricks' that were a bit too big and cut them down to size, but it would have created a lot of waste in addition to costing a lot more.  It made more sense to purchase one large cube and cut it down into several smaller cubes.

I did this using a cutting board and serrated knife.  Simply cut the cube in half, and half, and in half and so on until you have the amount of smaller cubes you need.  Then trim each cube until it fits neatly into your container.

*When I said 'simply' that was a joke.  It takes a bit of muscle to cut down a lot of dense styrofoam with a regular knife so have yourself a protein bar first 😁  Or you could invest in a styrofoam knife for around $20-$25 and save yourself a lot of trouble 😎

Containers Ready

Here you can see that my foam is cut down and prepped to fit the containers.  I intentionally left them a little tall so that I would have more surface area to work with.  I did not, however,  plan on the gap that you can see between the foam and the bottom of the vases.

I didn't realize until this point that the vases were convex in design and sloped inward at the base.  I was going to apply a bit of glue to the bottom of the foam (after the flowers had been arranged) so that the foam wouldn't move around, but you can see that that wasn't going to happen with the cube shape of the foam.  I toyed with the idea of cutting the foam at a slant as well, but I knew I was planning on wrapping the foam in ribbon and wanted sharp corners for a nice, clean look.

This kind of thing happens all the time in design.  You start out with one idea in mind and you get derailed by something unexpected.  The trick is to not worry about it and keep moving forward.  Eventually you will think of something creative to solve the problem, so there's no reason to waste valuable time stressing out.

I figured we could hide the gap with a bit of foliage, marbles or stones at the bottom.  As it turned out, the arrangements looked ok with the gap and my MIL left them as they were!

Covering the Foam

Here's where the satin and burlap ribbon combination came in.  My MIL wanted a rustic burlap look, but the foam was visible through the open weave material.  We decided to pair it with satin to cover the foam and give the burlap an extra pop.  The contrast between the rustic burlap and elegant satin turned out to be really pretty.

Layer One

Starting at the bottom of each foam cube, I began using hot glue to attach the ribbon in place.  Notice that I made sure to line the ribbon up evenly with the bottom and left no overhang.  How did I determine the 'bottom'?  Each cube had one nice perfect side (from being cut at the factory) and one rough side from me and my serrated knife 😎

Once the first layer was complete, I added in a second.  This section of ribbon is layered slightly over the first (we don't want any green peeking through) and peeks up over the top of the cube.  This was intentional and you'll see why in a minute.  But first let me point out that depending on the size of your cube, you may not cover the entire thing with just two strips of ribbon.  No biggie, just continue to wrap in the same manner pictured here, making sure that the last layer leaves a bit of excess at the top.

The Fold

Now that we are all wrapped, let's deal with that excess ribbon.  I allowed for this extra bit so that it could be neatly folded over the top of the cube.  First I glued the corners down and then followed up with the sides.  This allowed a nice, neat finish to the factory cut side of the cube.

Now, so far I've been calling this the 'bottom' and it was - but now that it's finished off so nicely, let's flip it over so the raw edge of the cube is now the top and add that burlap.

Burlap

I added the burlap in a similar manner, simply glueing one strip around the middle.  You can see here in the photo why it was important to flip the cube over - now the nice, clean folded over bottom of the cube is visible at through the base of the vase with the raw edge at the top.  This raw edge is going to be covered with flowers and foliage so eventually everything that is visible will be pretty.  When I worked in the floral shop we called this "hiding our secrets" 😊

Note:  I want to point out that even though the bottom of the cube is nicely covered in folded ribbon, it still features a big huge square of exposed foam.  I cannot tell you how much this bugs me!  I mean, what if we are at the party and someone drops a fork, leans over, looks up from the bottom and sees this uncovered foam?!?  Gasp!  It pained me to leave it this way, but not knowing if my MIL would want to add marbles or stones or what-have-you I left the foam exposed in case I needed to glue anything to it.   Like I said earlier, it turned out that she opted to go with the arrangements how they were.....and the only people on the floor of the restaurant were my own children and a couple of cousins, so there you go.  Things are working out for me 😆

And that's where I'll leave things off today.
In part two I'll show you how to prep and add stems into your fall centerpieces and then I promise I'll get back to our birthday party fun! 

Oh, and before I forget, check out the new 'World Audience' page that I published today.  Simply look to the top right section of this blog and click on the World Audience tab to learn about the readers of Studio 27 by Jennifer Adams, and maybe even take part in the selfie challenge 😀

I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!
-Jennifer

© Studio 27 - By Jennifer Adams 2018