DIY Artificial Flower Arranging Tutorial: bouquet of red roses in a cut glass rose bowl

In this post I will share with you my DIY bouquet of artificial red roses and how I put this creative arrangement together, including handy tips and tricks that I learnt along the way. A tale of a steady hand, creative eyes and lots of fun, each step on this ‘Do It Yourself’ journey… who knew faux flowers could be so enjoyable and satisfying? (Well okay, my Nan knew! lol)

The plus sides of using artificial flowers around your home for decoration

Artificial flowers were something I only ever associated with my dearly departed Nanna Moore. As a child, I enjoyed smelling flowers, so I, of course, had to ask my Nan why her flowers didn’t smell when I gave them a sniff. She educated me on the existence of fake flowers that don’t smell. However her selling points were that they never die, don’t need any looking after (watering, pruning etc) and as she did, you can choose different colours for each room to match your colour scheme. She also did flowers by the seasons and occasions; at Christmas time it was always red flowers, in Spring she had yellow, Remembrance Day she had poppies. Yet one of her yearly staple flowers, was red roses!

After my Nan died, I inherited her collection of artificial flowers. I quickly went on my Pinterest account ‘helensjourney’ and started searching for ideas of how to use these fake flowers. There are so many ideas, so I started pinning away and in the end I had so many ideas rushing around my head that I couldn’t even choose which idea to go with first. So like my Nan, I thought let me just go straight back to the old faithful red rose and start there.

DIY Artificial Flower Arranging Tutorial: bouquet of Red Roses in a cut-glass rose bowl

As you can see from the ‘before’ picture above, they started out as a bunch of long stem red roses all the same height. However, as I had also inherited her rose bowl that you can also see in the photo above, I wanted to use them in that but they were too tall for it. Determined to use the two together, my creativeness kicked in and I had to idea of trimming the flowers to the height I wanted in order to use that specific rose bowl as my vase. Now, being a artificial flower novice, the wire inside each stem didn’t make this as simple as I had imagined! 😉 A pair of pliers were my choice of tool to get through the wire and that worked perfectly (I picked up the trick of wiggling of the pliers back and forth to cut through the wire as I went through cutting the flowers one by one).

As you can see the rose bowl is a wide bowl with the rose wire over the top to hold the flowers in place. So I decided I would cut the flowers all different heights and make a flower arrangement that will always face forwards on a shelf and be viewed straight on. My Nan used to have this rose bowl in the centre of her table and so the flowers she used in it were all the same height, as it was viewed from all sides of the table where people were sitting around it.

So I would definitely advise thinking about where your flowers are actually going to be placed around your home and the different directions they will be looked at from, before you even start cutting them or arranging them. This forward planning and thinking ahead will save you hassle and time having to re-do the arrangement if you then put it in a place that doesn’t suit the arrangement you have already done.

Also, knowing where you want your arrangement will also impact on the colour or style of faux flower you use. This is why I decided against using the white flowers you can see in the before photo that accompanied the long stem red roses originally – simply because of my colour scheme. These handy tips are the beauty of hindsight. 😉

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After cutting each flower to a variety of heights, I was left with a pile of the remaining stems I had cut off. So I put leaves on the top of the stems where the flowers would normally be, and used these stems of leaves in the arrangement to fill in the spaces and bulk out the arrangement. You can see for yourself in the photo of the finished arrangement, it really helps to bulk it out and the contrast of all the green leaves makes the red on the roses stand out even more. So don’t be afraid of using leaves without flowers in your arrangements too – it really is a balancing act.

Tips and tricks for DIY artificial flower arranging

Now, it is important to know I didn’t place everything in the ‘perfect’ place straight away. I played around with it, put things in different places and then moved them back again if prefered. I often stepped back to look at the arrangement from a different perspective instead of so close up. If in doubt you can always take a photo of it and then study the photograph to pick out the bits you want to change or swap etc.

There isn’t a ‘perfect’ way to do flower arranging, and different people like different arrangements – after all there wouldn’t be so many choices for flower arrangements when planning a wedding if there was only one way to do this! So get the idea of ‘right way’ and ‘wrong way’ out of your head and embrace doing it ‘your way‘!

DIY artificial flower arranging really can be a fun process, just go with the flow and don’t get easily annoyed or frustrated. It was light hearted fun and when you get it how you want it, you feel a great sense of achievement and satisfaction.

The plus side with artificial flowers is, if you aren’t happy as time goes on, it is easy to start again and rearrange them. So it can be like you are buying a whole new flower arrangement each time you change things around. If you change the room colour scheme maybe consider dip dying or spray painting the flowers if you want them to be a specific shade not available to buy, so then it matches your room decoration exactly.

So here you have it, my first artificial flower arrangement in the picture below. I am super proud of it and I know my Nan would be impressed with me too, which makes me like looking at the even more!

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I still have lots of faux flowers, leaves and plants left and lots of ideas for them. Although I haven’t fully decided exactly on my next project, I am enjoying collecting ideas on my Pinterest board ‘Creative Imaginative Ideas & DIY’ (click on the board name to open it up in another window & follow me there) and I will share more blogs on my creations as time goes on…

I think the only other thing I have made that I have shared in a blog post is the pancakes I made for Pancake Day, but you can read that post by clicking HERE: “How to do pancake day, the healthy way! Gluten-free, Sugar-free, Vegan and Non GMO pancakes”

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