Holiday Florals under $20

Who doesn’t love some fresh flowers in the house? I certainly do, but it can get expensive to buy a single arrangement every week. I really do not want to spend a crazy amount of money on flowers but I do want to enjoy them. What’s the solution?  DIM – Do It Myself of course! And because I love to share, I have put together a quick little tutorial. Like fashion, floral design is also something that should be personal and fun!

My favorite place to buy greatly affordable flowers is Trader Joes, I bought 4 different items for under $20. As I was pulling everything together I remembered that I had some extra foliage left over from trimming the Christmas tree that I could use as a filler.

Next step I grab the vases that I would like to use and hope to be able to have enough flowers and filler to make them full and lush. One round patinaed vase and two square glass vases.

The patinaed vase has just enough glamour for more formal spaces in my home like my dining room, and the square vases are just so simple and chic they go with everything. They are medium in size, where they can stand alone or work together as a pair.

A super fun trick that I learned from a Winston flowers workshop – to figure out how long you should cut your steam so you don’t cut too much or too little, is to bring your vase to the edge of your surface and measure out where the steam should be cut! Isn’t that super easy and helpful?

This technique is a time saver especially when you want a modern look when the flowers are flush to the vase. I can’t even count the number of times I have over cut flowers before learning this easy tip.

For these arrangements I used hydrangea as my flower, mostly because I love them, but also because they are nice and full you can get more volume with one single steam than you can with let’s to say a single rose.

For fillers, I like to choose to greens that have a different structure so one can drape and the other can stay at more vertical, and another that has a more dense structure. Balance is important when putting together any type of florals.

I always end up doing a few similar versions style of design, which is whispy greens on either side off-centered by a full floral and filled in with more greens and decorative items for a color pop and design elements. Or green on one side and flowers and decorative items on the other.

With this type of aesthetic, it’s important to always have each item at a different height otherwise it will all blend in and look like a green bush rather than a gorgeous arrangement.

Flowers are like fashion at least in my opinion, go for what you like and what makes you happy, when you look at it, and it feels right then it’s perfect. These are just a few little ideas to guide you along.

Adding a fun element like a feather can make your flowers look fun and personalized to your style or for the season. I had this red one around for a while, I use it all the time, it’s versatile  and dramatic.

Every time my family and I go out for walks we collect pine cones and acorns and the occasional fun twig, that we later paint and “glitterfy” for projects like this.

Long and whispy greens drape the sides, because the vase is a little fancier than the other two I decided to make this one more dramatic by exaggerating the length, to balance out the volume of the hydrangea the other fillers were layered in and the finally some berries to add a pop of color, and a pine cone lightly painted with gold and sprinkled with glitter.

Love the way the end result of my dramatic version it looked in my dining room, having the chocolate brown wall as a backdrop really made it pop.

I tried to use an entire spring of each in every vase, and I still had some extra left over, how great is that? Just enough to fill my two favorite little vessels that I picked up at one of my many antique store outings.

Just because they are little doesn’t mean that do not deserve the same amount of detail an special festive touch.

These tiny little acorns are perfect for adding that special touch that they deserve.

They can be nestled into the greens and even fill some spots that may be a little empty, its all about scale, these work great here because they are small and slightly bigger than the berries.

So sweet how these little nosegays can hold their own and have as much of a presence as the other three have. Made with just leftovers.

Can you believe that all these florals were made with Trader Joes, flowers, extra pieces of Christmas tree, pine cones, acorns, and a single feather? And all under $20!!!!

 

It is always so much fun putting flowers together, especially knowing that I am not spending a fortune, and I can make it my very own. My son enjoys being a part of the process as well, he likes to gather all the found items and paint them too. Every time I pass one by I not only enjoy them because they are pretty they also remind me of him.

Hope this post has inspired you to go out and buy some flowers and get to decorating!