DesignsandEvents: A Three-Tiered Flower and Gem Arrangement

This three-tiered glass server became inspiration one day for me as it sat on the shelves in my kitchen. I decided to play around with ideas to use it for a floral design. It's winter. Inspiration is a definite "must" at this time of year.

Flowers have been used many times with these servers so, I wanted to try something new. However, flowers are my thing so I, of course, had to use flowers but also needed to add something else. I decided to use jewelry and add some "bling" to the arrangement.

When doing an arrangement such as this, you need to begin by figuring out the mechanics of it. I started with these plastic vase liners.

Next, I filled the liners with watered floral oasis and then attached the liners to the server with waterproof floral tape. That stuff is pretty sticky and worked well for holding everything in place.

Here is the top layer. The oasis is cut higher than the liner in order to allow for the many flowers (stems) that would be needed to complete this top floral arrangement.

I got deeply involved in creating this floral design and totally forgot to take photos as I was working along. I'm sorry to say that I only have these photos of the finished product! So, sorry! That just happens sometimes :). However, from this picture you can see that there is an arrangement on each layer coming down one side of the server.

My vision was to use all white flowers when I began this project but, white lilies were not available so I had to use pink ones. In the end, I really liked pink in the arrangement. The pink lilies added more of a punch. I also used regular size carnations, as well as mini white ones. I used large white mums also.

Next, I added the jewelry. Starting with pearls, I then

added rhinestone jewelry to give more of an opulent look to the whole design.

You can see here that I was trying to make a cascading effect with the floral arrangement(s); kind of like a flower waterfall. Having the flowers fall on one side of the server looked distinctive and allowed for good viewing of the jewelry on the other side. I think this idea would work well for a jewelry party. It would be a new and fun way of displaying the jewelry.

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This photo allows you to see the three levels of flowers individually. It also shows the versatility of the arrangement. It can be left as a three-tiered arrangement or separated into two or three separate ones.

Here it is displayed as a two-tiered arrangement.

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This was the top tier. I placed it in a white mug and added more flowers all around the arrangement so it could be viewed from all angles on the dining table.

Three-tiered servers offer all sorts of options for decorating and entertaining, not the least of which is serving food, evidently, but playing around with them in different ways can be a lot of fun too!