how to wrap a handtied bouquet

Welcome back to Ephemeral Fall. Finally, it is my blog post on bouquet wrapping. This blog post might be slightly longer than the others but it would definitely worth the read. All the best in wrapping your own bouquet.

Tools required: floral scissors or garden shears, jute twine or binding wire, aluminium foil, cellophane, cotton, wrapping paper

1. Arranging flower:

• Take a large bloom (or a group of same flowers) as your center flower.
• Start adding in different flowers following spiral method.
• turn the bunch slightly in the same direction everytime you add a flower or foliage to create a neat spiral of stems for easy adjustment of the arrangement.
• If you are using flowers with different colours, make sure they are distributed evenly.
• the colour distribution would look overwhelmed at one side if there are too much dark-coloured flowers on the left and light-coloured flowers on the right.
• Tie the bouquet up with jute twine or binding wire.
• Adjust the arrangement again before tying a dead knot.
• Make sure to move up flowers that sink in and adjust foliage position.
• Cut stems diagonally to desired length at similar level for water absorption.

Arranging flowers

2. Wrapping up with cotton:

• Place the bouquet on top of a sheet of aluminum foil.
• Cover the stems with dry cotton (do not wet the cotton before wrapping stems as it would be difficult to adjust wet cotton).
• Make sure the bottom part of cotton is thicker for better water absorption.
• Fold the aluminum foil up and wrap together.
• Put into plastic bag or wrap with cellophane and seal with jute twine or binding wire.

Wrapping with cotton

how to spiral flowers

The spiral technique is essential in bouquet arranging, it allows easy attempt to insert or remove flowers and foliage while designing because the stems are only overlapping each other (no crossover), in that flowers and foliage should easily slide in and out. 

• Start with the first stem as a base.

• Place one stem over it at a 45-degree angle in the same direction using the thumb as a pointer. 

• Rotate the bunch of stems as another stem is added, always keeping the placement at angle so they form a spiral.

• Adjust the height of each stem to create different shapes of bouquet from round classic to flowing organic.

It is always a good idea to start practice on spiralling beforehand with leftover stems because it is easier to see what is going on without any flower and foliage on the stems. It may be slightly awkward at first, but the spiral effect would start to develop when many stems have been layered in. It would feel more secure with more stems arranging in the same direction. 

All mistakes are practice. Good luck.

the basics of handtied bouquet

Welcome to Ephemeral Fall. My blog focuses on providing practical guides on Korean style handtied bouquets for floral beginners. While it may be unusual for a university student to be demonstrating how to put together flowers from flower care and handling to flower arranging, I would like to share my knowledge and experience on floristry based on the workshops and private classes that I attended which organized by professional florists.

This my first blog post on the basics of handtied bouquet and I would introduce the six elements of design in bouquet making.