Learning to do my own floral arrangements

Photography and Video by: Angel Torres

As the holidays get closer, I wanted to learn to do my own floral arrangements. I tried a couple of online tutorials but well, did not go quite as planned. So I started a quest because I really wanted to learn the right way! I found out that Field of Flowers in Florida have this cute little corner called The FlowerBar where they host private classes! BOOM! It was quite perfect since I was heading down there for Thanksgiving.

They have a variety of classes you can take, you can see their schedule here. I love that you can bring your own wine bottles and make it a date with your girls! Or you can even make it an event at work because they do host corporate parties as well! I went on a Saturday Morning and had the pleasure of having Martha as my teacher. We created this gorgeous piece, that of course you can adapt to more holiday like colors. I honestly chose this colors because they are my fave, but instead of the pink roses you could do red roses and instead of the purple flowers you can substitute it for greenery.

Martha taught me the difference between a hand-tied piece and a florist foam piece. She mentioned that she preferred to do hand-tied since if gives you more flexibility in your design. I agreed! Since there is nothing fixed where you are making holes, but rather just holding it on your hand it felt a little better to just move stuff around as you wanted.

We started by prepping every single flower. For the hydrangeas you have to remove all the big leafs that are not at the top. For the roses, they have this cool little nifty tool made out of silicone that you just fold over and it removes every single leaf and most of the thorns. For the purple flower also removing any bottom leafs and finally the greenery we used was a kind of eucalyptus (which is gorgeous for a holiday piece).

First we grabbed 3 bunches of white hydrangeas (my favorite! Remember I had them on my wedding too?), then we spread around the pink roses. I spread them out but you could also do little bunches of roses. Then we inserted the purple flowers (I cannot remember the name of this flower sorry!) and since they are long, you can either leave it long sticking out the arrangement or if you want a cleaner look (like I did) just cut them, but make sure as you cut it, cut the stem a bit below the surface so the flower covers the area without sticking out.

Then without letting go of the bunch, you tie all of them and then you cut the stems to the height you want on your arrangement. Oh a small fact I learned is that it doesn’t really matter if you cut them in an angle- for years I thought that’s how you were supposed to do it, making me do one by one, but Martha who is an expert and has been doing this for over 30 years told me it doesn’t really make a difference so I’ll go with her suggestion.

And that’s it, put it on a gorgeous vase and there you have a great little arrangement ready for any special occasion, or better yet, just because. I do love me some just because flowers :)

Huge thank you to Field of Flowers for having me and giving me their very best florist to learn from! Check out this little video we created: