Easy Flower Arranging with grocery store flowers and yard clippings

Have you ever wanted to put together a flower arrangement that looked fancy? Or maybe you aren't sure how to arrange the roses that your SO sent to make them look not so...typical. Today I'm going to teach you how! All you need are some flowers from the grocery store, some pretty branches (I clip mine from a large bush I have outside), a vase, some scotch tape, and that's it!

After spending a few years planning weddings I started to really get curious about flowers- they played such a large role in a wedding day and the florist could really make or break my entire wedding design. After about a year of research, learning, and freelancing for some florists whose work I admired I felt confident to start offering florals to my brides myself. This would become an area of my business that I really enjoyed, so I wanted to pass along some of my strategies to you!

And guess what? You don't need to go to a fancy floral wholesaler to get this look. Before we get into the tutorial, let's answer some questions I know you are going to have!

What flowers do I buy?

Head to your local grocery store and start looking! I like to try and find plain flowers without a lot of smaller filler flowers- white or taupe roses are the jackpot and what I managed to find for this post. I bought this bouquet of roses for $20. You will notice that I won't use the baby's breath or the greenery that comes with the arrangement.

Steer clear of brightly colored neon flowers in multiple colors, unless you have a more bohemian or eclectic space these flowers likely won't go with your home. I also saw this smaller bouquet for $8 which I think could have worked as well.

What type of vase should I use?

Pedestal vases are my absolute favorite to design with, but anything can work. Here are some of my favorite shapes to work with.

The two on the left are pedestal vases and this shape is perfect for the type of arrangement we are making today. The other two are perfect as bud vases to pop an extra rose and a sprig of greenery in, but truly any vase can work, even if you only have a tall clear cylinder vase you can still create something stunning!

Let's get into it!

You will need:

- scotch tape

- grocery store flowers

- a vase

- clippers (these work great, but if you don't have clippers normal scissors can work, it just may be more difficult to clip thick branches)

- some greenery from your yard (look for pretty longer stemmed greenery, cut the stems long enough so you can let the organic shape be seen, you can always trim it down later if you need to. I used some ligustrum from my backyard)

Instructions:

First you want to fill your vase with water and create your floral grid. You do this by taking scotch tape and taping off the top of your vase. Start by making a straight line of tape across right in the center.

Next, add two more pieces on either side.

Now we're going to turn our vase and add three more pieces so we have a grid like this.

This is going to create some support for the stems so they don't just flop over.

Next, you want to put in the greenery in, this is going to create the base of the arrangement and take up the most space. Cut your stems at a diagonal and place them in at an angle all around the vase. Once you have an entire perimeter of greenery, add a few more sprigs to the middle, see if you can get these sprigs a bit more vertical, this will give you some height.

Leave your stems longer than you might think, you want anywhere from 6-10" draping out the sides of the vase. Continue adding greenery until it feels full. Don't worry about what it looks like from the top (it may look kind of crazy), no one is going to look at it from this perspective.

Take a minute to look at your arrangement from the front. If you have this effortless looking organic shaped greenery you are on the right track!

Now it's time to add the flowers- the arrangement should actually look full with only the greenery and if you wanted to stop here and make a free arrangement you totally could! But I'm going to keep going and add the flowers in- again, make sure to cut the stems on an angle so they can soak up as much water as possible. If you have roses or anything with petals that can be pulled out- then you can take your fingers and open them up a bit. So they go from looking like this...

to this.

Very gently pry open the petals and fold the first few layers back, this makes such a huge difference!

Add each bloom into the greenery, space them apart. Place some lower and some higher into the arrangement. If you were making a centerpiece for a table you're going to want to place your flowers all the way around, but I was planning to place mine on a shelf so I made it one sided and only needed five flowers to fill my arrangement.

I ended up using my leftover flowers and greenery to make a few more arrangements.

That's it, it really is that easy! I hope this gives you the confidence to tackle this project and please tag me on instagram or facebook when you do because you know I want to see it!