Fabulous Faux and Fresh Floral Arrangements
How to blend quality artificial flowers with fresh and dried flora to create beautiful arrangements that last all season.
I love adorning my home with fresh flowers, but purchasing and arranging bouquets on a weekly basis can be both time consuming and expensive. While silk flower arrangements offer a convenient alternative, even high-end picks can all too often look impossibly fake or tacky.
Though a bit pricier than craft-store finds, single-stem, botanically accurate flowers made from materials such as latex or specially treated silk serve as convincing impostors of springtime's prettiest blooms. Pair these lovely faux blossoms with hearty seasonal greenery and fresh and dried flora to create beautiful and long-lasting 'everyday' arrangements.
From left to right: green myrtle, honey bracelet, pink rice flower, dried lavender and ivory hypericum berries
Select hearty flora that will hold up long after traditional blooms have wilted away. Recommended greenery includes myrtle, salal, boxwood, ruscus, hypericum and seeded eucalyptus. Longer-lasting flowers that may be watered or dried upright in a vase include lavender, globe amaranth, limonium, rice flower and blue sage. Soft pussy willow stems are notoriously indestructible and work equally well in wet or dry arrangements.
Faux roses pair beautifully with six-stem myrtle leaves and ivory hypericum berries.
Pretty faux tulips peek out of a bed of fresh green ruscus, ivory hypericum berries and poufy, moss-like dianthus flowers.
A simple arrangement of seeded eucalyptus and faux ivory roses will last all season if properly watered.
Six Tips for Better Flower Arrangements
1. Spritzing fresh flowers with a bit of hairspray helps prevent wilting and discoloration, particularly when the weather is warm.
2. Fresh greenery will last longer if submerged for five minutes in cool water before adding to your arrangement.
3. When using fresh flowers, remove at least one inch of stem, cutting on a 45 degree angle while holding under running water.
4. Place a copper penny in the vase to slow bacterial growth. A few drops of bleach works just as well.
5. Bundle small bouquets with a rubber band or bit of florist tape before placing in the vase.
6. Prune all leaves from the parts of the stem that will be submerged in the vase, otherwise the water will quickly grow murky.
High quality "real touch" flowers are a step above the silk stems typically found at craft stores and can easily be procured online. Quality can vary tremendously, so be sure the seller accepts returns in the event the product received differs from that pictured. The tulips shown above were purchased from Smylls via Amazon; Etsy's StempleShop also offers high-quality blooms. The lovely roses featured in this post are from Flowers-by-Design. Note that floral wire cutters are essential for trimming faux stems and woody branches to the proper length!
For a long-lasting arrangement that needs no watering, tuck faux tulips into a slender vase together with fragrant lavender, delicate limonium and a few branches of soft pussy willow. Stems of hypericum berries may be added as well, just be sure to pinch off the leaves as they will otherwise wither to an unsightly brown.