Flower Arranging Workshop

I have always loved flowers, whether they are alive, picked, fresh, or dried. If I didn’t do what I’m doing now, I would want to be a florist. Well, eventually I chose a different path, but I really wanted to create a flower bouquet, and I did.

I found and advertisement on Instagram by a Bogor-based florist named Andalucia Fleur which announced that they would hold a flower arranging workshop on May 26. The workshop had two sessions; the first was hand-tied bouquet workshop and the second was flower box. I only registered for the first one. I was so excited!

D-day arrived. The workshop was led by the owner of Andalucia Fleur herself. Before we tried creating our bouquet, she had taught us the techniques of flower arranging and introduced us the flowers and fillers we were going to be using. For the flowers, we were given coral Ecuadorian roses, white carnations, Martina spray carnations, apricot lisianthus, and a pink double bloom tulip. Fillers are mainly foliage or tiny flowers to—as you can guess from their name—fill and give volume to the bouquet. The fillers for the workshop were waxflowers, tree fern, baby blue eucalyptus, thorow wax, and ruscus.

 

Each flower stem had multiple leaves and they had to be cut, leaving only one to two pieces on the upper part of the stem. It was done to avoid bulkiness on the bottom of the bouquet. This also applied to the fillers, leaving only the upper part.

Before we got to the flowers, it was suggested that we started with arranging the fillers first, because they would be the “background” of the bouquet. Left hand was used to hold the bouquet and right hand was for arranging the flowers. For the workshop, the center part of the fillers was the tree fern. And then, the next filler stem was put diagonally. The stems for the left side were put on top of the fern, while the ones for the right side were put under the fern. This applied to all filler and flower stems, so the only stem that was held straight was the tree fern.

For the flowers, we had to pick the “point” of the bouquet, and it was decided that the point was the double bloom tulip. The point should be in the center/front, but I made a mistake here, because my tulip wasn’t centered and thus wasn’t shown enough as the point :(

After the arrangement had been fixed, we tied the bouquet. The bottom stems should not go over a span from the tie (long stems were cut). And then, the bottom part of the stems was covered with cotton and was put in a plastic bag containing water. The amount of the water depends on how long we would like the bouquet to last; the more water we add, the longer the bouquet will last. However, we must be careful to not add too much water, in case it spills from the bouquet. Next, the plastic was tied tightly so the water wouldn’t come out, and then the plastic was covered by tin foil.

And then came the most difficult part for me; the wrapping. The bouquet was wrapped with tissue paper on the back and on the front of the bouquet.The tissue paper was then tied to the stem. On the back of the bouquet, we added two more of wrapping papers. A little of mesh fabric was added to the center of the bouquet, and then it was tied. A hand tag was added, before tying the bouquet with ribbon. And voila! The bouquet was ready.

Creating a hand tied bouquet was actually hard! My bouquet wasn’t perfect, there were many mistakes here and there, but I know I won’t stop trying. All in all, it was a truly fruitful workshop and I was happy I could finally do something I had always wanted to try. I’m looking forward to more flower arranging classes in the future!