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Sunflower Trials

After my successful trip to the dollar store where I found my vases I went on a search for sunflowers. I went to every grocery store in town: Albertson's, Wal-Mart, Fry's, Sam's Club ... nobody had ANY sunflowers. I was so frustrated I almost called the local florists in town Monday morning. It is a good thing I got busy and procrastinated making that call because on Thursday dear sweet Mr. B called to tell me that Fry's had sunflowers for $3.99 for 5 on sale.

After work I made a bee-line across town to the Fry's and walked out with my arms full of sunflowers. I grabbed 4 bundles of the best sunflowers for a grand total of $17. Not too shabby at all, especially since this was just a practice run. I gave mom and ring and headed over to her house to play.

So ... what did I make with my 20 sunflowers??
One short centerpiece


One tall centerpiece


and a bouquet


Here are the centerpieces side by side


I got the vases at the Dollar Store, mom got theses beads at Wal-Mart, but for the rest of the centerpieces I am going to pick up the ones at the Dollar Store. For the small centerpiece I also need to pick up real oasis because the styrofoam we used didn't hold water. I estimate that each centerpiece will cost me about $10 when I figure in the cost of the flowers. The tall centerpiece took 5 flowers and the small centerpiece is 7 (but I think 8 will look better).

After some cost comparring and calling around we are going to order the sunflowers from FiftyFlowers.com their sunflowers are $129.99 for 100 and they offer free shipping. I also found a 5% off code (BRIDE) so that takes off an additional $6.50. We will need about half for the centerpieces and then I will make my bouquet. The rest will be used on the (cup)cake table, the guest book table, around the food buffet and the bar.

I am glad that we did this trial because I was originally anticipating needing more flowers. I was trying to convince mom that we needed to order the 160 or the 200 quanity lots. Did you find that your trial run helped save you money?

A Grocery Store Bouquet - Part 2

Part 1

When we last left off I was finally happy with the size and shape of my bouquet. Unfortunately I didn't have any raffi in the house. I search around really quickly and decided just to use a rubberband.

I did a fresh cut on the stems and let them soak overnight.


The next morning I picked a nice satin ribbon from my stash and grabbed my scissors.

I experimented with few different ways to wrap the stem, but I finally found a way that worked. I did a faux wrap to figure out how much ribbon to cut.

I left about an 18 inch tail at the top of the bouquet and then worked my way down.


I wrapped at a slight angle all the way to the bottom.


Then started wrapping back up the stem, when I got to the top I tied off the top


Then tied the ribbon in a bow and cut the ends at an edge.


Ta Da!!

A Grocery Store Bouquet

In an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, last week I made 2 bouquets with flowers I grabbed at Albertson's. I had a friend that was going to be heading to the court house on Friday and I wanted to practice to see if my skills would actually hold up in September to make my own bouquet.

It was the Thursday before Mother's Day so there was actually a wide variety of flowers to choose from, and they were on "sale" as well. I looked at the roses ($9.99 for a dozen) but my friend had asked for purples. Most of the roses were pinks or reds which wasn't gonna work for her. I went over to the mixed bouquets but none of them were really calling my name either. My last option was to pick from the selection of flowers that were 3 bundles for $12.99. If you have been to Albertson's you may have seen this section before. Each bundle is all the same type of flower. They did have sunflowers ... but since my friend wanted purples I put them down. (I will come back again another time to try with those) This is what I ended up buying:



I am not sure what they are called. They kind of looked like daisies and the bundles looked really full so I thought I would get a nice full bouquet. Once I got home I set up my little work station on the kitchen counter. I grabbed a vase and filled it with Reverse Osmosis water and grabbed my scissors. I then pulled and cut off all the leaves and then recut the bottoms of the stems and put them in the vase. It was during this first round that I realized that the bundles looked so full because each stem had 3-5 flowers on it. In my head I thought "this could be a problem" but I kept de-leaving until I was done with the whole bunch.



When I tried to make a bouquet out of the stems I just wasn't getting the look I wanted. The flowers were at various different heights and I wasn't getting a nice round shape. On to plan B ... I cut all the flowers off the stems. Most of them still had a long thinner stem, but some did end up very short. The also started falling into the water in my vase, so I grabbed 3 jars/cups and filled them with Reverse Osmosis water as well. As I cut the flowers I divided them by color into the 3 cups. This let me see the flowers that had the longest stems, as well as helped make my color selection go fast when I started assembling


Next I began my arrangement. I had read and seen a few online tutorials and I have watched enough DIY tv shows that I kind of combined techniques and did what felt natural.

I picked some of the long stems with the smallest flowers for the middle, then started working my way out and around. I remembered to cross the stems to get the correct angles and switched hands back and forth to keep the round shape.


I tried to create a "pattern" with the colors, but in the end I was just grabbing the flowers at will and putting them in the bouquet where I thought they fit best. When I got a good handful of stems I decided that the bouquet was as full as it was gonna get. They are small flowers so they started to really get smooshed the more I added. I am sure with bigger flowers the end result would have been a fuller bouquet.


You will have to come back to see how I ended up tying the bouquet (since I couldn't find raffia in my house) and covering the stems.

DIY Lessons learned:
#1 - check the stems to see if there are multiple flowers
#2 - don't pick flowers with delicate petals
#3 - have raffia, string or florist tape in the house
#4 - let the flowers drink before you start playing

I will definitely be doing another trial with sunflowers sometime this summer when I find them on sale. I think I will need more that the 3 for $12 bundles at Albertson's

Have you done any trial runs of your DIY projects? Did you learn lessons to help with the final project?

A little flower inspiration

From the very beginning I knew that I wanted to have sunflowers at our wedding. Mr. B doesn't have an opinion on flowers. My problem is that I am not very confident with the local florists in town. They are just your standard florist shops, nothing really special that sets them apart. I would probably get very traditional flowers and likely over pay as well. Mom & I decided that we could DIY the flowers. I did have to talk her out of using silk flowers. I just don't like how silk sunflower look most of the time. After finding a few wholesale sunflower suppliers online I started searching google for inspiration.

Here are some of the centerpiece ideas:



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I loved that these were JUST sunflowers in vases. For a DIY girl that has never done flowers this makes it much less frightening.

And a hand tied bouquet for me is DIYable as well:

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I don't need many boutonnieres, so I don't look for them too much. I like these two:

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I still need to do a trial to make sure I CAN DIY all of this, plus I have a few more ideas up my sleeve as well to give Mom & Dad's yard that extra touch.

Are you going to DIY your flowers?