If you are impressed by the architecturally impressive creations in fancy hotel lobbies, try this project.

Start by curling up a ball of curly willow branch tips and pushing them deep into your container. This creates a grid for you to build your arrangement: When you push your stems into the water, the grid will hold them in place.

Next, make clusters of different types, shapes and heights of flowers. You want odd numbers – threes and fives.
Choose a color palette: different shades of whites and green, pastels, or in this case, sassy citrus hues.

Tuck the tallest flower like these tulips toward the back, a middle-height flower like the gerbera daisies in the center, and then something low and bushy like hydrangea at the base. An oversize leaf tucked in the back adds more drama.

In the end, you have a contemporary homage to a flower market – all those little buckets of blooms.

I do naughty things to florists’ bouquets.

Almost invariably I take them home, get out the scissors, and have an Edward Scissorhands afternoon. Yes, this is slightly ungrateful and infinitely prissy, but I promise that in the end, they actually do look better.

I have honorable motivation here: I want my flowers to look like they came from the garden, and nothing is less organic than a dozen long-stemmed roses spaced just so between mountains of baby’s breath. (Apologies here to any person who has been kind enough to send these to me. I promise I showed them a lot of love.)

Whether they come from the florist or the grocery store, it’s easy to make them look chic at home.

Think outside the vase
Everyone at my office swooned over this orchid creation.

It is insanely gorgeous and also incredibly easy to do yourself. I love the creative use of those stylish apothecary jars that I’m seeing in all the shops. (Try Z Gallerie, about $40, www.zgallerie.com.)

To make at home, buy a stem of cymbidium orchids, available at better flower shops. Gently peel back the leaves of the orchids just a bit to show off the centers.

Fill the bottom of a jar with about 3 inches of small stones, which you can find at a craft store. Fill the jar with enough water to just cover the stones. Give the orchid stem a fresh cut, then insert into the stones, which should anchor the stem. It will last at least a week and even longer if you keep the stem trimmed and the water fresh.

Simplest is best
This is, after all, about celebrating nature.

Look how elegant and sculptural this small branch of flowering quince looks, just plucked into a champagne flute. You can find flowering branches like quince, almond and forsythia at better florists.

As the branch rests in the water, more blossoms appear, announcing spring in the simplest and most inspirational way.

Cut those roses short
Rose stems aren’t so pretty, and the blooms look best when they’re resting on the edge of an opaque vase.

To arrange, layer them around the outside of the vase first, and then fill in the middle. Choose the smallest container that will fit the flowers. You want it to be full and tightly packed. Tuck a few leaves in for a spot of green.

I love to use unexpected containers for flowers. Find vintage pewter cups at antique or thrift shops.

Rearrange the grocery bouquet
You know that premixed jumble of flowers next to the checkout stand, always $7.99? Buy it.

It’s a bargain, and you can eke so much floral joy from that little bundle. Take it home, group the flowers by type – daisies together, roses together – cut them short, and make as many mini-arrange-ments as you can.

Put them in teacups, votives, even water glasses and spread them around your house.

Waste nothing. Fill your teapot with daffodils for the kitchen counter. Make a tiny bouquet in the laundry room or a little something on the bathroom counter.

Here’s my favorite: resurrect those “filler” ferns by placing them in a thin glass bottle and putting them in the bathroom. You have no idea how delightful flowers in the shower can be.

source : zanesvilletimesrecorder.com