How To Arrange a Bouquet of Two Dozen Roses in a Vase | FLORAL DESIGN

Hi, welcome to arranging with Judy. Today I bought a bunch of roses from Costco at $14.99 and we're going to arrange them. I got 24 of them and they're a lovely fall color and you can do this too in your house. And what I did do though, which Costco doesn't have, they don't have foliage. So I went out to the garden and cut a few things and I have some stuff that I can add to accent this. Because the first thing we're going to do with these roses, I'm going to make a large 24 roses arrangement. Kind of in a large style rather than like a real packed. And then maybe next time I'll show you how to do it really tight and packed in what we call pavé arrangement. This is just going to be a loose lovely arrangement of roses. Okay, so I want to start, you know floral design really is math. I'm sorry if you hate math, I'm sorry. I hated math too. I worked hard at it and I did okay in it but here I am in a in an industry where it's math. So I have 24 roses and I'd like to figure out how I can arrange these in an all the way around arrangement. A viewed from all sides arrangement. So I think what I'll probably do is I'll start out with about eight of them around the edge. You know you need at least five to make a circle, right? Because if you had four points it would be a square. So you need at least five but I have enough that I think I could easily do eight. All right so I'll just start out with my shortest ones and I'll choose eight of them. It's not bad math, I promise. It's just uh you know mostly geometry. Okay so what I want to do is I want to go around the edge. I'm just going to give these a fresh cut and I just want to go around the edge of the container with these flowers and these will be my lower placements and if you look carefully you can see that I'm crisscrossing them so that they will form a grid that will hold the rest of the flowers up. Also you may have noticed that I pre-taped my vase. I didn't explain that before I got started and I put a grid of tape across here. I think this size vase I have one two three four five six seven eight. Eight going this way and then eight parallel no perpendicular to those and that'll kind of hold the stems in place. So I have eight in here right now. Okay so I have kind of you know a round circle. They're going around the edge of the container and they're fairly the same length. So my next set will be another eight. I'm trying to leave the the longer ones for last and what I'll do is I'll go in between the ones that I just put in. You see what I'm saying? Like uh you know I have these two here. The next one will go above but in between. Okay so let's see. I'll put one on this side and one on this side and I'll do the same thing all the way around. I always give my flowers a fresh cut before they go in the water so that it opens everything up so they can absorb more water. I guess I'm gonna go on this side and you see how those stems from the previous placements are starting to hold these flowers into place. Let's see over here now. And I'm putting the flowers in first so that you can kind of see the placements. Sometimes it's quicker if you put the greens in first but then sometimes you use more greens than you really need and it ends up being heavy. So we'll see how this works if we do it this way with 24 of them. Okay so what do I have left? Eight and eight is 16. I have another eight here. So what I want to do is I'd like to have rather than the typical you know pointy arrangement here, I would rather have a soft rounded effect. So I don't want to put one up at the top. Do you know what I'm saying? What I'll probably do is I'll end up with two or maybe three up at the top. So I think I'll take these five right here and I'll go in between. Because this circle is getting smaller, I need fewer placements to do the same thing. You know what I'm saying? So these five will go just in between these but I won't need eight placements again. Do you see what I'm saying? Because I have a smaller space at the top. So I'll put this one in here and this one in here and right here and one in over here. I should probably turn this a little bit to see what I'm getting over there. Oops. And then over here. Oh boy, look what I did. I didn't put a wire in this and wire. Well you know I want one more in here and they came in 24s. So let me see if I can. No, you know what? I'm just gonna do without. I can do without. So the next couple are gonna go in here up at the top to fill in. So then I'll just take and I can see up here and there where you know putting one stem in move to other stems that I might want to just adjust this a little bit. I'm trying to be very very precise but here's my rounded arrangement of roses from Costco and I'll just take some foliage now. I got I cut some Artemisia out of the garden and it's very very fall Artemisia at this point. It has its blossoms on it and it's starting to be done and but I like the way it looks with these peachy colored roses because it has a fall flavor to it. So I'll just put a few pieces of that this really beautiful Bradford pear that is turning colors right now. Nice fall colors. I think I want to add that in too. Grab a little bit more of this Artemisia here. So just fill in. I could have used chicken wire in this too to hold this in place and sometimes I like to have chicken wire on something like this because then it makes it easy to pick these things up out of this arrangement and re-cut the stems after a day or two. I like to have my water clean. I like to have my base clean so I will frequently you know change the water in these arrangements especially with the roses and a floral preservative helps a lot too. The powdered stuff will do as well as the liquid. If I was doing this a lot at home I might invest in a jug of the liquid just because the powder stuff is it doesn't it kind of dissolves not so clear sometimes. It's a little cloudy sometimes. Okay so that's pretty evenly placed in there now. I'll get this Bradford pear out and oh my gosh this stuff has just I don't know if I can show you how lovely the color has formed in this with the oranges and the peaches and the greens all mixed together and a little bit of red. It's just beautiful. This stuff comes up wild in the field out back and I'm always happy when fall comes and it changes because it just gives so much interest to a flower arrangement and some of it is red and some of it is peach and I mean I just look at this isn't this just gorgeous. So it's fun to get this stuff from the you know from the grocery or from the big box stores and it's really fun if you can just add a little something of your own to it you know from the yard to give it a little more gardening feel and to give you a little more interest and if you can't get if you don't have anything outside then you could probably stop and purchase you know purchase some foliage from a florist. You can get your roses from a florist. I decided to try the Costco ones. I'd like to see one of these last. They're beautiful for right now and if I was having a party tonight and I wanted to do roses you know this would be a really nice way to go. If I was buying roses for a friend and I wanted them to last a long time in their house I'm not sure if I would buy them from Costco but we'll see. I'd like to see how this turns out if they last a long time or if they open all the way or if they you know blow really fast and end up dying early. I'd like to see that. I know the the ones from the flower shop are going to last you you know sometimes they last for weeks and so they're a different quality than what you get at Costco but these look pretty nice and I think they'll be you know beautiful for this arrangement right now. Let's see and I want to make this a little kind of loose and kind of you know airy and gardening because that's kind of my style but you could keep your you could keep your foliage very trimmed and very you know tailored if you would prefer. All right let's see one more piece over here. Yeah this stuff is kind of grabbing at everything as it goes in so you got to kind of push it in there. Let's see maybe another little piece here or there to bring that color through. My floor is starting to look like a fall bell. So I can see I need one more piece of foliage. Sometimes you don't just need foliage to fill in sometimes you need it to prop something up. So I'm going to get one more piece there and then I think that'll do it. Okay all right and one more way here. So after you finish your flowers and your foliage just you know twist it around a little bit and look for any place where you have you know not even color you know uneven color or you need a little piece here or there because as you arrange you know of course you move everything around. So there you are two dozen roses well almost arranged in a vase from Costco. We'll see how they do. Thanks!