DIY Wedding Decor, Sustainable Artificial Centerpiece | Elegant Floral Arrangement, Floral Design

Hi, I'm Cara from Enchanted Vines, and today I'm going to show you how to make this easy DIY wedding centerpiece that your guests will never even know is not real. Let's go! So for designing these beautiful wedding centerpieces, we're going to be using this champagne compote base. Okay, it's metal. We're going to be using a foam block, some high quality greenery, as well as some very lifelike but artificial florals. So to start, we're going to prep our container. So I want my block to fit in nice and snug. Because we're working with a metal base and then this foam block, I like to just add a little bit of extra security to the bottom so it doesn't just kind of like pop off and separate from the block. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take some burlap, you can take any type of fabric, and I'm just going to glue it to the bottom. Okay, and just be cautious when we're working with high temp glue because good lord, does it hurt if it gets you. So I've got my glue there, take my pieces of burlap. All right, okay, so this is what the base looks like right now. Nothing too spectacular. And now we're going to take another layer of glue, and you could also use a glue gun for this, might actually be a bit easier. And I'm just going to glue all around the base. All right, like so. And now I'm going to take my foam block and I am going to just press it down and hold it. So we're also going to be using some Spanish moss to cover up our mechanics. So you can either do this whole thing at the end, or I like to do a little bit at the beginning and then a finish at the end. So I'm going to take the Spanish moss and I'm just going to kind of stretch it out, and I'm going to fill around the block. I don't want it to be covering any of the block because I don't want it to interfere with where the stems are going to go. Right now we kind of have a clear angle to fill in all around, and this is also going to help keep our block nice and secure. Okay, so we've got our moss in, and this stuff is so messy. You might be wearing this for days, so you might want to dress accordingly. Okay, so once we have our foam and our moss in place, I'm going to take just a few of these floral pins. And if you don't have floral pins, you can just take any piece of wire and just make it into like a u-shape. What I'm going to do is I'm going to just put it through so it is catching some of the moss and the base. And so you'll know because you'll hear that crunch noise, and that means that you have successfully attached the two. Okay, I'm just going to do one on each side. So we're doing four of these floral pins. All right, and next we're going to be designing on a Lazy Susan, and I prefer doing this because you want to make sure that every side looks great. You know, there's going to be people sitting at every angle of the dinner table, and so we want to make sure that we have an arrangement that one looks good from all angles, and also one that people can talk over. So it's going to be low enough. We're going to keep that in mind that it's not going to be a huge piece that would interfere from people interacting. So I'm going to start off with a little bit of ficus, and I love ficus just because it's a very inexpensive greenery, and it covers a lot. So it's definitely going to just be something more in the background, but it's also going to give us a little bit of guidance. So what I'm doing right now is I'm taking one piece of ficus, and I'm breaking it down into four pieces. So I'm going to use two full pieces, and so what I'm doing is I'm going to spread each branch apart. The side two are just the right length, so I'm going to just snip them right at the base, and then this middle piece, it's a bit too long, so I'm going to just go up two branches a little beyond the halfway point and snip. And then this little guy, I call it a numbin, you know, he's really going to just be, again, just doing some covering. So sometimes I use them, sometimes I don't. So to start, I am going to be dipping all my materials into the glue pot. Okay, and this glue pot is from Surebonder, and I'm using their glue pellets as well. They're just excellent quality. All right, so to start shaping this, I'm going to go from one side, and I'm going to give this a bend, okay, and then I'm going to repeat. And for most steps, you're going to see I'm going to repeat, and the reason why is because I want everything to be evenly balanced. That's also why we're using our Lazy Susan. This is going to go again right into the side, and I'm going to give it a little bend, okay. Now I'm going to go in with some other pieces, and if you find that the foliage is in the way, like it would have been here, just pull it off so you have a nice clean stem to put in. All right, and I'm just going to start making sure there's a little bit going on every side. So we have our first one that's in our block, and then I'm going to repeat. This is OCD at its finest right here, but it is very helpful sometimes, and this is one of those times. Plus my house is always clean. All right, so putting it in, again mirroring it, okay. All of these materials, they're wired. They're highly malleable, so the chances of you really breaking something or damaging it to the you can't use it, it's very unlikely. So you want to make sure that you're using your materials to best suit whatever your design is. Don't be afraid to, again, like kind of like manhandle them as needed. All right, I'm gonna go in with more, and what I'm doing right now is I'm just using these to cover up our base. We obviously don't want people to see this artificial foam block, so I want to cover it up as much of the surface as possible. I don't want to go crazy because we obviously need to save room for the floral stems to go in, but I just want to have a little bit of coverage. No one wants to know how the sausage got made. They do not want to know that these are artificial, and that we don't want people to know how they were assembled, just that they get to see this beautiful, natural looking arrangement before them. I knew there was an oven hiding somewhere. Okay, so once we have a bit of a foundational greenery in place, we're going to go in with our focal flowers. So for this, we're going to be using some very lifelike garden roses, and what I like about these is not only I love the coloring, it looks natural, the foliage looks good, but I also like how they're grouped. Okay, so sometimes you're going to split things up to, again, best serve your purpose. For this though, I think I'm going to end up keeping them as is, so we shall see. So I want to group like things together because I'd like to take our larger blooms first and put them in, and then what we're going to do is we're going to see where the gaps are. So this is when we're pattern designing, and we're pattern designing basically as we do each step, it outlines where the next step is going to need to be placed. So we have a total of five of these garden flowers. Okay, we have one peony. So I'm going to put the peony right up top. I don't love the foliage on this. It's a little bit artificial looking, so I'm just going to **** it off. Again, like keep the parts that you like. It doesn't matter what everybody else thinks. It's, you know, it's your aesthetic. It is your style, especially if it's your wedding. You know, you want to think a certain way, so make sure that every piece is serving its purpose. So I'm going to put this peony right in the middle. She's so beautiful. I wish I had a bunch of them, but even just having the one I think is going to serve a great purpose. And so I'm going to bend the head. So when we look at how things grow in nature, things don't just grow like, you know, straight up and down in neat little rows. It's messy, and floral heads tend to face the sun. So what we're going to be doing is also kind of recreating that feeling. So I'm going to put that one peony there, and then I have this little peony bud, and it's going to go right behind it. Okay, and then we're going to start in with our roses. So I do want to make sure that everything is getting fluffed and separated so that everyone can see all the different components. So I'm just kind of spreading these out, and again, if you have foliage that's in the way, like this is going to be in the way, just pluck it off. All right, so we're going to start just how we started our greenery. We're going to start off side to side. I'm going to take my first piece, and it's going right over basically how we lined our ficus. Push that down a little, okay, and then we're going to repeat. So we're going to just cut this down, pull off a little bit of foliage that's in the way, and then I know I'm going to be bending this downward so it cascades a bit. This even has like artificial thorns, which I could do without. All right, so putting that in, again bending it. Now I'm realizing that I obviously didn't cut this enough because that piece was much longer than this one, so I just pulled it out real quick, put another little dab of glue on it, and try it again, and make sure that we're nice and balanced, which we are. So now we're going to go in with our third set of roses, and we want these to be, we want our arrangement to go wide here, not necessarily wide out here. We don't want it to be round, so I'm going to be putting these in at a different angle, and I'm also going to be cutting off one of the stems. All right, so here's how this one has been placed. It's going more outward, okay, so I'm kind of going into the side of the block, and then I'm going to repeat that on the other side. So I'm going to clip off one of the blooms, and I'm going to repeat, and I think it's just easiest when you just do things in repetition to, again, ensure that things are balanced. Make sure you don't have too much of something on one side. We want to make sure that at every angle people are seeing, in general, the same, the same florals, the same colors, things like that, okay? Right now, again, they're built out the sides. For me, like a rule of thumb is, if something doesn't look right and it starts to irk you, just fix it on the spot because there's a very good chance that feeling is not going to go away. All right, now I'm just separating this last cluster of roses. We're going to spread these out, okay, and I'm going to look for my bare spots. So again, when we're talking about patterns, we can see, you know, we have some spots in the corners, okay, on every side. I'm going to address those first. We want to keep everything going in the same motion, okay? So for this side, we have everything pointing at an outward angle. Repeat that back here. So there's several benefits to using artificial florals. One is you can have your centerpieces done and packed up months and months in advance. I had somebody who actually had her bridal party do this as a workshop and I thought it was a great idea because not only was it useful for the wedding, but also they were able to get their centerpieces all done in October for a wedding that was happening in December, okay? And also you don't have to worry about, you know, traveling and all of that stuff, them wilting, you know, it's just something you've done in advance and you can just cross right off a very long list, most likely, of wedding to-dos. Let's see, now we're going to go in with a few smaller florals. So we have some ranunculus and what I'm going to do, so for this ranunculus, I don't like the foliage, okay? It's very bluish. It does not look real. So I'm just going to pull this right off and discard them. Again, if it's something that you like or say we were working with blue-based greenery, like lambs ear, it would totally fit in, but it does not work with the greenery that we're using right now. We're using yellow-based greenery, which to me just looks a lot more fresh and vibrant, like what you would see out in nature. So these are going to be some filler florals. This is one of those things where you kind of have to trust the process because as you're going, you might be saying, this is not what, this is not what I'm wanting for my wedding. However, it is going to all pull together. So trust the process. And so what's nice about using different types of blooms and different sizes is it all adds to visual interest. It creates that textured look, which to me, texture often is, you know, a sign of something being handmade, you know, valuable, expensive, you know, a lot of thought was put into it. All, all the great things. We want our guests to feel special. We want our night to feel special. And so in addition to the low maintenance of using artificial florals, these are things that can also be resold. So weddings are expensive. And a lot of the time I think, geez, like this could be, you know, a deposit on a home. So if you can actually recoup some of your money by reselling things, there's so many groups on Facebook where they're just selling off, you know, different things from their weddings. I would absolutely do it. I would probably save a little bit for myself for sentimental value, like save one or two of these. And then I would, I would sell the rest, unless you want to give them to your guests. And again, it becomes a lasting reminder of your special day. So I'm just going through, I'm spinning and putting the ranunculus in between where we see a bunch of these gaps. And then we have actually, we have another rose. So let's use it. The more, the merrier. I am a more is more girl. So let's do it. I'm using heavy duty. These are cable cutters. So you can use wire cutters. I just think these are much easier on your hands. So I think using good tools definitely makes it a much easier task, especially if you're And as we're designing, we just want to kind of keep analyzing is everything evenly spread out. Like if I'm looking at the side, we have two buds here and not one of the larger blooms. So to me, that's a spot that's lacking and needs to have a more full floral in between to break that up. All right, now we're going to go in with some greenery. Let me see. I pulled some other florals, but I actually don't think we need them sometimes, sometimes not very often. Well, you hear me say this, but sometimes less is more. And when we go in with our filler greenery, it's actually going to, I think, make this arrangement very complete and very airy. Either I have strong or this is growing because I can't see over it. All right. So we're going to start off with this trailing Ivy. Okay. And this to me is just a classic. I think it's so beautiful when you see things that are just, you know, kind of cascading down. We want some to cover the base a little bit. We want some going in between the florals kind of disrupting again. We want to make sure that you can see all the different elements in our arrangement. That's what's going to give it that natural feel. This one happens to be from TCT crafts and I just got it the other day. And it's my first time using it and I am loving it. All right. So starting in with some of the smaller pieces. Okay. I'm just going to fill in some of the gaps. I'm just going to go around and start placing these in between our flowers, cascading pieces. We're going to just put to the side for now. They're definitely going to get used. We want to make sure all of our greenery is facing the right way. We don't want to be looking at the bottom of our greens. We want to be making sure that the tops are showing. Okay. And then we're also just, as we're putting these in, we're bending them so that they're going in the direction that we want. And if you put something in and again, it doesn't look or feel right to you, just pull it right out. This is a very forgiving process. I mean, you can pull things from the block. You don't want to pull something from the block, like over and over again, because every time you do, it's eating away at the block a little bit. However, if you just stick something in and you don't like it, just pull it right out. All right. So now we're going to use some taller pieces. This piece is too tall. So we're just going to trim it down and I'm just plucking off any foliage that's going to interfere with the stem, actually making it into the block. Now I always like a little bit of drama, also my florals. So I'm going to put some of this right in the middle and give it a bend. So it looks like it's growing in between our roses. So it's going into the block and then you can bend it or you can bend it first, whatever workflow is best for you. But we want to make sure that we're keeping in mind that we are building this side to side, not round. So we wouldn't want to place one of these, you know, going out super far because then it's going to actually round out our design. And I'm laying this over the ficus. So if you are not a big ficus fan, you're really not going to see it. It's not going to be something that's overly present in your arrangement. It's really just a backbone of the structure that we're using. Kind of like the bones of a house. Got to have them, but you're not going to see them. I'm just putting these more towards the bottom. I want to make sure that our mechanics are covered. And then also, I just think it looks nice having something draped down like that. We have some other greeneries that we're going to follow up with. I usually like to use a minimum of three different types of greens. I think it just adds a lot of texture and visual interest. And especially when we're trying to have something look real, we don't want it to have that like big box store or manufacturer feel to it. So adding in different elements is going to help us accomplish that. All right, now we're going to go in with the fern. And let's see, these are pushers, which pushers that we're always a fan of because we can manipulate how airy or how compact they are. I'm just going to slide these up. This is a mixed fern bush. And I'm going to just cut all of these pieces off at the base. I want them as tall as we can get them. All right, and now again, I'm going to start looking in pattern mode of where do we see that there are open areas. And I'm going to just start plugging these pieces in. My dogs are like rumbling outside. Two shepherds sound like a herd of buffaloes when they're in full force. Okay, so you can see right here I'm repeating and do the same on this side, using up our longer pieces so they're kind of jutting out nice and airy. Always make sure you hear it hitting the block because the more you're putting things in, the harder it is to kind of locate how deep the block is. But you got to hear that like little crunching sound to know that it's actually secured in the block. We do not need to deal with a bunch of things falling apart on an important day. There's way too many things going on to have to worry. That's kind of the beauty of this is that it's very, very low maintenance. One over each of the ficus. Okay, she is filling out nicely. Next, we're going to go in with some ruscus. And ruscus is one of my favorites because it just has such a nice movement to it. Okay, this is also a pusher. And you can, you know, again, manipulate how airy it is or not. And so for this, I definitely want that crawling action of it growing in between things. So I'm going to leave this, I'm going to move it up a little bit so that I'm not wasting any of the greenery by being too close to the block. But I also don't want to make it so compact that I lose that airy effect. Okay, so let me take this, snip them off so they're as long as can be. And then whenever you're working with any bush, whether it's a greenery or florals, there's going to be different lengths of the stems. So you want to just be mindful of, you know, what's the tallest because the tallest we want to utilize in the center. So for this, there were two pieces that are just taller than the rest. And I'm going to start in the center. So in general, we don't want to put any of our materials higher than our focal florals. So around here, some of the greenery though, I do like when it creeps up a little bit. So that can go a little higher, but we want to make sure in general that the blooms are going below that mark. Okay, so I don't feel it's going to be able to bend a bit high. All right, and then we're going to just go through and just keep spinning this and filling in any of the bare areas. Okay, and then we're going to just spin it and repeat on the other side. I mean, really we're using, I mean, we could just have gotten away with using just the roses and not done that one peony. So that was five stems of roses, one stem of peony, and then we're using, we used two pieces of ficus and three different greenery bushes. So not a big recipe list. No, not a big shopping list. We're going for a very classic look. So it doesn't need to be complicated. And then I'm going to add just a few other textures to this. All right, so as I was foraging, foraging in my workshop for some textured items, I did come across more of these filler flowers. So I'm just going to go and plug some of these in. Okay, it's just these same guys, and then there's some ranunculus. We just want to make sure that both sides look equally as full, full, but still nice and airy, right? Just spreading these heads around. Let's add some right here. And every design is going to come out different. Even if we have the exact same materials, just the way things fit in and the way we design, it's going to be a bit of a variation. So the goal is not perfection. The goal is to have something that is uniform, but doesn't have to be perfect. I think about like when they talk about having your eyebrows done, like they're supposed to be sisters, not, not twins. So same thing with the florals. Want them to look related, but they do not have to be that precise. And also that, that level of perfectionism is probably not going to be that fun when you're designing. So you want to enjoy the process and end up with a beautiful arrangement. All right, so now we're going to go in with some berries. So I have two different kinds of berries. I have these cream colored ones, and then I have these chuchus green ones. And I always place a high value on nice berries because they have to have this hard coating on them. You know, I want to put UV treatment on all of my designs. And if they're just the ones that are covered in, or they're not covered, they're just styrofoam, really the UV spray on its own could eat away at it, let alone the sun. So I like these, both of these sets are very great quality. So I'm going to start here. Okay. So I took this one branch of berries and I broke it into three parts. So there's two tall parts and then one small. So for the two tall, I'm going to put these here. Okay. So you can see them here and here. And then I'll break down our second one. So we're going to have again, two talls and one small. So when you have any type of material that is wound in paper, they're going to pull apart pretty easily. And then you just want to be kind of cautious that, you know, it doesn't all come undone because then you're going to end up with a bunch of individually wired florals. You can always, you know, take floral tape and kind of put them back together. But if you can spare yourself that step, I say spare it. All right. Now let's go in with our smaller green berries. So I'm going to put these on the lower part of our arrangement, kind of towards the middle, and then I'm going to have them cascading down. So I'm literally taking them and I'm bending it. Especially when we're working with more expensive materials, we want to make sure that they're in a place that they're going to be noticed. All right, now we're going to go in with our cream berries. These are so, so pretty. These are from Greenery Market and their product lines are just, they're so lifelike. Definitely good to invest in lifelike florals because then you're not going to feel like you've missed out on anything by not, you know, going through the fancy florists, like all that stuff. There's a very good chance that people will not even realize these are artificial, which is always so satisfying to me. All right, so let's just take one branch is going to go out to the front and I'm going to spin this around so that on the opposite angle we have our second one. Give them a little bend so they have a nice little flow to them. And then the last thing that we're going to add are these artificial moss twigs. I love these things. These are from Pioneer Wholesale and they just add a little bit of, I don't know, like whimsy to them. A little bit of like the unexpected. So I'm going to break this down into a few pieces and have them going off so we still have our wider side this way. Take one and it's totally fine. We want these to be higher than our focal florals and these are a bit soft, so you just want to make sure that you hear, again, it going into the styrofoam because it can easily just kind of bend and just linger and you wouldn't know. And then when you go to transport them, pieces could fall out. Just be listening for that noise. These are super, super malleable, so just spread them out however you see fit. All right, and here we have it, our DIY wedding arrangement. And this could also just be used if you're looking for a monochromatic look. You know, this could fit in a lot of different spaces, different occasions. So let me know what you think. If you tried this arrangement, if you like this recipe, and if you want to design with me again, please like, subscribe, and share. Thank you so much.