The Making of a Late Summer Bouquet

When I found this selection of flowers at the market, I thought the colors were pretty and would look nice in a hand-held bouquet.  Although I love sunflowers, their arrival in the market, sadly, meant the near end of summer to me.  However, they are beautiful none-the-less and I just had to use them in a floral arrangement! 

Follow the process these flowers took to become a hand-held bouquet...

 The first thing to do when doing anything with fresh flowers is to cut the ends of the stems at a 45 degree angle with sharp scissors or a knife.  Then, place them into a bucket of water enhanced with some flower preservative.

 Next, to make a hand-held bouquet remove all the greenery (leaves) running down the stems of the flowers, leaving the stems pretty bare.  This will make the bouquet less bulky and give it a cleaner look.

 I was working alone so, I wasn't able to take many photos to show you my process but, here I have arranged the flowers in a round bouquet and bound the stems together with floral tape.

I also added some greenery around the base of the bouquet and wrapped it with more floral tape. 

 

At first, I thought I would use purple ribbon to cover the floral tape and decorate the bouquet but, I didn't like the look of the purple ribbon.  I thought it was too "purple-y".

I decided to use burlap ribbon instead.

Not totally liking that look, I decided to wrap a small amount of purple ribbon over the burlap wrap.  I tied it in a bow too!

Here is a top view of the bouquet.

 

I had also added a burlap "collar" to cover the stems at the base of the head of the bouquet.

 

 

 The flowers I used were sunflowers, purple stock, purple statice, yellow mums and yellow alstromeria.

I just love these colors!

The sunflowers and stock are beautiful.

Here it is...a lovely late summer bouquet, ready to be given to someone to brighten their day!

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