How to Make a Large Floral Arrangement Tutorial

I'm Allison Fleck, the founder of Bloom Culture Flowers, and in today's tutorial, we're gonna talk about a DIY barrel arrangement. Okay, so in today's tutorial, we are going to be using what is called a tribute cage. It is one block of wet floral foam, and it's inside or housed in a plastic cage. You can place this on the wine barrel. You're gonna do it ahead of time, but then place it on the wine barrel when you get to the site, or any other large space. You wanna put this at the base of your arbor or any other location that you want a statement piece. This is a great tool to use, and this tutorial would be perfect for that. Okay, so not everybody is going to have a wine barrel at their disposal to design on. So what I typically do is I will turn over a bucket, and I will either place the floral foam on the bucket and arrange out from there. It also helps elevate the arrangement so you're not designing from one vantage point or another. Just make sure that you turn as you go. In today's tutorial, I am going to design on my Lazy Susan. This will also give me the advantage of turning as I go. But you don't have to have a Lazy Susan to design this. Just make sure that you're turning your arrangement every so often, which you'll see me do throughout the tutorial. In today's design, we are going to start with greenery as we do with all of our other tutorials. We're probably gonna have three different varieties of greenery that we'll be using. I like to use an abundance of greenery for large-scale pieces. That way, we cut down on the amount of flowers that we have to use, but we don't have to cut down on the scale. You know, if we're working with different types of budgets, greenery is always gonna be your best friend to augment pieces and augment sizes of arrangements without going over budget. Okay, as you can see, I have pulled three different kinds of greenery. We have got our salal, which is a great broad-leaf greenery. We have got our gunni eucalyptus, which is kind of nice and feathery, which gives a different texture and a different color. And then this, I like to use seasonally. This is brevillia. You can see that it's got a beautiful variation of color. It's got a little bit of red to it. And I really like the texture as well. It's kind of feathery, a little pokey, so it gives a great variation. So it doesn't look stagnant. It doesn't look all, you know, like a giant piece of just one solid greenery. Okay, let's get started. I am going to start today with salal, or it's also called lemon leaf. We wanna keep these stems fairly long. Remember, you're gonna wanna cover the parameter of the wine barrel. It's gonna be a large statement piece, so we wanna keep these long. It's always easy to cut a little bit of length off, but you can never add length to a stem, so keep them long. When you start, it is going to feel like a little bit of a hot mess. There really is no rhyme or reason to this, except that you want to keep it balanced or kind of spread out. So I typically start a little bit low on the foam piece and just insert it about a half an inch into the foam. If you can see the stem, that's okay. That's gonna be covered up later. So I typically just keep going in. You're gonna break down stems. This is, you know, it's got a fork in it. It's okay to cut it. Add the fork and then put your stems in the foam. You just wanna keep layering everything in. We are starting out to where the stems are fairly long. If you get to a 0.2 later on in the design that you wanna add length, that's okay. So don't focus too much on it right now. Just start getting some coverage and start getting some of the stems placed. Another thing you wanna do in this stage, if you are inserting your stems into the floral foam, it's okay to do it horizontally, but you wanna try to give a little bit of an angle to it. That way, your stems aren't all hitting at the same plane or they're not all laying flat. So when you give it a little bit of an angle, kind of help that bounce up a little bit and that will really help elevate the design, make it feel more fluffy for lack of a better term. You just wanna give it a little bit of space to allow other stems to come into the design as well. So again, it's gonna look a little bit Frankenstein to start out with, and that's okay. Just keep pushing. One thing I wanna note, when you are working with greenery, sometimes you're going to have leaves and pieces that are not as beautiful or not as perfect as you want them to be. And these pieces, that's okay to use them because they're likely going to be covered up. So don't feel like everything has to be perfect. The stem overall looks fantastic. So I go ahead and use it. When designing, you don't always wanna put your long pieces on the bottom. It's okay to place them on the top of the arrangement so that you can give that height and then you give space for other flowers and other greenery to go into. You don't want it to just be this one perfect dome either. So when you create lines like this, it helps create interest in a more organic feel. So I'm gonna continue to fill in the greenery with the sallow. Again, just keep rotating. Just keep rotating your arrangement. Right here, you can see we've got this space open. Just go in and start adding a few of these pieces. Just keep adding in your greenery. You can see that there are two different rows here. You wanna make sure that you're hitting in the top row and the bottom row. It doesn't have to be equal. It doesn't have to be even. Just make sure that it's distributed. Continuing on, we are going to just keep placing our greenery. Again, it's gonna feel pretty big. When you are rotating it, you might get smacked in the face by some greenery, and that's okay. But don't let that stop you from moving it around. You're not gonna hurt the stems if they brush past something, if they're being kind of drug around on the surface of your table. They're gonna be just fine. We use this greenery because it's really hearty. Just make sure that you are approaching this design from different angles because you don't want it to just be one note, especially since it's gonna be sitting as a statement piece at the entry of your aisle. It's gonna be seen from all different vantages. So just make sure that you've got every bit of it covered. There are gonna be some smaller pieces as well. So these are a lot larger compared to this stem. These pieces, I tuck into what I call the interior of the arrangement. So it's gonna kind of cover up the interior of the foam in here, and you're not gonna get it all covered just yet. Again, we are going to take this step-by-step in layers. So if it's not covered on our first pass, that's totally fine. We've got multiple greeneries and all of our flowers. All right, you're gonna notice that you have varying sizes of stems, and that's okay. You don't need to use all of the larger pieces because this is supposed to be a large arrangement. When you get something that has maybe a smaller leaf to it or a shorter stem, you're gonna wanna use that in the interior of the arrangement. So just poke that down in here, and you'll start to see that it gives you a really nice coverage of the foam, and then it'll also start to leave little holes here and there, and that's going to direct you on where to place your future greenery and your flowers. So holes aren't necessarily bad. It just tells you where you need to put it. Now that we have all of our salal placed, we are going to move on to our gunna eucalyptus. I wanna talk a little bit about the differences in stems, even within the same bunch of eucalyptus. This one is pretty rigid, and this one, as you can see, has a lot of movement and a lot of what I call drape to it, and I wanna talk about kind of the appropriate areas that you wanna use each. What I typically look for is a longer piece that can manage on its own. So I typically cut it in half, and then you still wanna clean the stem up. You don't want any of these pieces just gunking up the floral foam. And then pretty similarly to the salal, you really just wanna start placing it. I talked about having those holes earlier, so look for holes, and that will kind of guide your hand as to where to place the greenery. You want, again, to place it at a slight angle and just start going. I know it's not gonna feel natural. It's not gonna look beautiful yet at this point, but just keep designing and just keep placing. It'll start to fill out and feel more comfortable. All right, we're gonna continue placing our eucalyptus. Make sure that you give each stem a little bit of a fresh snip just so that when you place it in the floral foam, it continues to soak up that water. We are going to just rotate our arrangement like I've said that we're gonna do. Look for the holes in the salal and just keep placing. It's not gonna really feel like there's a rhyme or reason to it, but just keep going and just keep placing. So when you have a bunch of eucalyptus that has some curvature to it, has a little bit more movement to it, use that to your advantage. You want to take these pieces. You don't wanna just stick it straight in because it's not gonna make a lot of sense right there, but bring it out to the edge of your design where the arch or the curvature of that piece will actually make a little bit more sense. Working with greenery or with any type of floral product that has a natural curve to it, just pay attention to that curve. You don't wanna go against its natural tendency to fall a certain way. If you just pay attention to how it arches or how it curves and you place it in your arrangement, that way it'll feel way more natural and way less structured or buttoned up. We're gonna fill in with some of our longer pieces of eucalyptus and with some of our shorter. Don't forget to come into the top of the arrangement and kind of tuck those pieces down in a little bit. That helps you create depth and dimension. It's not all just hitting on one plane or one note. So continue to take shoots off of this one long piece of eucalyptus. Some of these can feel a little thin or a little spindly. When that happens, don't be afraid to group them together. So put two together and then place those as if they were one stem. Come in and just start layering in. My big design process is taking this step-by-step, layer-by-layer. So right now we're on the eucalyptus layer. So fill in with this eucalyptus until you feel like there's enough. Again, there's not gonna be a set point that I say, hey, now you need to stop. Just fill in until you feel like the eucalyptus is evenly distributed, that it's not too heavy or too sparse on one side. And follow your intuition. I think a lot of people don't do that enough. I am a professional, but I just kind of follow my eye and if it looks good, then I go with it. Also, don't forget to turn your arrangement. I have found a couple of spots, like right here is really dense with the salal. So I'm gonna find a few pieces of eucalyptus to put in there to break up that color, to break up it broadly if you wanna give it more texture and more dimension with the color. So I'm gonna break down these stems. And even if it's a shorter piece, make sure that you are taking off the leaves and it's okay to use a shorter stem. It doesn't have to be an inch, three inches, two inches long, just as long as it's got a point that you can put into the floral foam and tuck it on in there. You actually might get to a point in your design where if I'm looking at this side, I feel like it's really nice and full, but when I'm looking at this side, it might need a little bit more of the salal. It's okay to go back and forth if you're thinking, you know what, this might need a little bit more of that product or a little bit less of that product. You can take things out, put things in as you see fit. So again, don't be afraid to experiment a little bit. Your first go at this is probably gonna take you a little bit longer. And then if you do another one, if you have two ceremony arrangements that you're gonna be using, you'll pick up speed and gain momentum the more you do this. When you are at this point in your design and you're trying to say, hey, Alison, I don't really see any more holes. That's a really great place to be, but I don't want you to stop at that point. If you need to kind of look in your arrangement and maybe move some of the stems to place an item, you know, like right here, you can place that right there. That's okay. You can move these and you might have to kind of dig in a little bit for placements at this point. What we're really going for is evenly distributed different stem lengths. And so if you need to move something to make sure that you get that spot correct, don't be afraid to go for it. At this point, we have all of our salau placed and all of our eucalyptus placed. I think everything is looking really full and really beautiful. I think that the scale is looking perfect. If you wanna come back in and add some longer pieces, I would do that later at the end of the design. But right now we are just gonna focus on getting this beautiful big scale done. I am now going to start placing some of the grebelia. You can really see how different this color and texture is really contrasted against the broadleaf green and the kind of feather eucalyptus. And then we're gonna go in with this texture. As you start to place greenery, you'll notice that we placed more of the salau and then a little bit less of the eucalyptus. And then I don't think that we're gonna need a ton of the grebelia. This is more of an accent greenery than a focal greenery or a filler greenery. So I like to use this because of the color and the texture, but it's not really going to cover a ton of surface area. And that's okay. You don't have to cover every single bit just yet. So with the grebelia, one of the great things about it is that it's got a really great long stem length. And if you wanna add some height or you wanna add more statement to your piece, I would go ahead and give the arrangement a little bit more height here and there. So it's okay if it comes out or if it's standing out a little bit. Now this isn't gonna be the only piece. It would look a little random placed in there. We're gonna fill in and make sure that it's connected to the rest of the design. But I think for some height in this arrangement, since it's a statement piece, it's okay to have some of these stem lengths that are a little bit longer than some of our lower filling arrangement pieces. Continuing with the grebelia, we don't want this tall piece just to be hanging out by itself over here. So we're gonna connect it back to the arrangement and create some continuity. How I do that is I just have smaller stems and I treat it like the salal and the eucalyptus and I tuck it in in varying places along the arrangement. Again, you want to just evenly distribute this. And like I said, working in layers, this is gonna be our third layer of the greenery. And I'm just gonna go in and start placing these pieces slightly randomly. But there is a connection back to this. We don't need a ton of the grebelia. We're really just using it for variation in color and texture. Don't forget to break a few stems down. They don't have to be the longest stem length and give them a quick snip before you put them in the arrangement. Tuck these pieces down like we have with the others into the interior of the arrangement. You don't necessarily need a ton of this. As you can tell, a little of the grebelia goes a long way, but we do want some in varying levels of the design so that it's not just hitting all on one plane. Kind of come around to the front of the arrangement. You're gonna have to dig a little bit at this point, and that's okay. You're not gonna hurt anything. This is really hardy greenery. And just continue placing. Don't forget to turn your arrangement. Looking at it from different vantages is gonna be really helpful in telling you where you need to place more grebelia, less grebelia, or if you're done. But in turning it around, I think you need a little bit more. When you're working on the outsides of the design, this is where you will want to have some longer stem lengths as well. So not necessarily the long stem length to create height, but you will want it to create some length. You don't want the arrangement to just feel like this beautiful round circle that's just contained in this one area. It's okay to kind of break those boundaries and give some length and some reach to your design. With Bloom Culture, we give you recipes for each design. In those recipes, it's gonna tell you how much of each type of greenery to use. So for instance, we've given you either a half a bunch or a full bunch of salal to use. We've given you a quarter of a bunch of the eucalyptus and possibly a quarter of a bunch of the grebelia. You can use as little or as much of that allotment as you'd like. For this instance, I haven't used all of the grebelia that I had set aside for this design, and that's okay. You can either save that and backfill the arrangement when you're done, or you can use it for a different design for any other pieces that you might have for your wedding or event designs. Next, we're gonna move on to our flowers. The lime flower we are going to be using in today's tutorial is Larkspur. It's really great for how airy and light that it is. It doesn't create this really stagnant or stiff arrangement. It's great for something that's more organic that it feels like it just naturally grew there. With our lime flowers, their sole purpose isn't to create focus, but I like to create focus with them. I don't really want to disperse them, kind of polka dotting them throughout the arrangement, because then it's just gonna look really rigid, like things are just kind of sticking out at different places. I like to be a little bit more intentional, and this is where a design rule of three comes in. I like to group things in threes, and then I like to stair-step them back to connect them back to the arrangement. I don't really want to have a dispersed, angular flower coming out of the arrangement. I wanna be a little bit more intentional with that. So what I will do is I will kind of find this longer piece of grevillea, and I'm gonna accent that. I'm gonna come in with my lime flower and just come alongside the grevillea, and this is going to just kind of help us create the design and the movement of our arrangement. With my other pieces of the larkspur, I'm not gonna keep them at that same length. One of the key things in looking professional in design is varying stem lengths. You're gonna be sick of me saying that by the time of this tutorial, but always have varying stem lengths. You can always cut your stem shorter, but you can't make it longer. So if you're not quite sure, err on the longer side. So come in here and kind of do a test run a little bit. You wanna see, oh wait, that's a little bit too long, and then that will kind of help you say, okay, I'll take a little bit more. So just a little bit at a time until you start to feel a little bit more comfortable. I've done this so many times that stem length is like second nature to me. So when you see me moving quickly through it, and you're like, she just did that so quickly. That's okay to take your time. Just make sure you don't cut off too much, because again, you just can't get it back. So in placing the next stem, I am going to tuck this down in here. You don't want them all going in the same direction. But as you can see, if I turned it a little bit, they're still, they're complimenting one another, but they're not competing right here. So I am gonna just keep filling in. And the next stem length that I have is going to be quite a bit shorter than those two. You're gonna have to break this down and make sure that your stem is clean before you insert it into the floral foam. This is gonna be quite a bit shorter, and I'm gonna come back down here. Again, connecting it back to the arrangement. You don't want something so tall and so long that it absolutely makes no sense. So if you do what I call a stair step, that'll really help you create something that looks a little bit more intentional, even if it's in its own grouping on its own. So I think for this portion of the design, the lion flower is gonna be good. What I'm gonna do next is balance that. I'm gonna come on the other side of the arrangement and cut these stem lengths just a little bit shorter than our longer first pieces. Tuck those in over here. Again, paying attention to the curvature and the natural drape of the flower. And continuing with our lion flower, this is going to start to feel grand and big. Don't let that intimidate you. Just keep designing and just keep going. We're gonna be layering in our flowers. Right now, we are on our lion flower. You don't want them to be all facing the same direction. So it's okay to have a lion flower going off in one direction and complementing that with a different direction. But again, I like to work in a rule of thumb of three. Maybe not even just three, but in odd numbers. I have always found that that just design-wise looks better and it's easier to work with. I will eat my words. I will eat that at other times when I'm like, oh, we're using six or eight. But as a rule of thumb, as a starting point, just work in odd numbers. And that will really help you to get something that feels a little bit more intentional and a little bit more designed. So right here, we're working with three to balance our five. And right now, I think we are gonna stop on our lion flower and we're gonna move on to a focal flower. In this design, we've caught a couple of different focal flowers because of the scale of the design. It is such a large piece that it's okay to use two, maybe even three focal flowers. So we're gonna move on to that next. Our first focal flower is this beautiful tinted rose. As you can see, I have not cleaned it up. This fancy or not really fancy little flower tool, it's just plastic. It is a stem stripper. You can just grab your stems and strip them off really quick. You don't want to keep any of that on there. It inhibits the bloom of the flower. It takes the water. So we just get rid of those leaves altogether. So make sure that you strip all of your roses or all of the leaves off of your stems before placing them in the pot. Also, if you don't have a stem stripper, you can just pop them off with your fingers really quickly. Beware of thorns. Sometimes the stems not only have thorns, but the leaves and their tiny stems can have thorns. So just be careful of that. One thing I want to mention before we start putting our focal flowers in the arrangement with specifically roses, they're going to have what's called a guard petal. When they start to bloom, you're gonna want to take these off. You'll notice that it's discolored, it's bent, it's crinkly, it's bruised. We don't need these. So let's go ahead and just pop those off, toss them on the floor. There might be some other little bits of greenery too that you just want to take off. So just make sure that you're cleaning up your flowers before you place them in the arrangement. This will help one of two things. It will help it absorb the water better and it's not going to inhibit the bloom anymore. So you want those guard petals gone so that the petal structure can relax and the bloom can open up. After you've got your roses cleaned up, another thing that you can do to really help the petal relax and help the bloom open is the rose spin technique. We absolutely love this. Not every rose does well with the rose spin technique, but these roses do awesome. So here's our before. And then all you're gonna do is just give it a nice spin. You will see some petals fly off. That is totally normal and totally okay. But look at the after. Look how open and beautiful that is. And that's exactly what we want for wedding flowers. We want this beautiful open bloom. It's gonna take up surface area. It's gonna be really large for our statement piece. We don't want them to be closed. We don't want them to be tight. We want them to be open and beautiful. And what I call, next up, we're actually gonna place these flowers. As you can see, they have opened up tremendously with the spin technique. I am going to place these kind of similarly as our line flower. I like to work in threes. So I am going to start probably along our line flower right here, just so I can start tall and then work back into the arrangement. So with our roses, you're gonna wanna do a little bit of a test run, kind of see how long the stem is by putting it in there and seeing where it hits the foam. This feels a little bit too long to me. So it kind of tells me that I need to take some length off of that stem. So I'm gonna come in, take some length off of the stem and come back in and connect it back into the arrangement and place that in there. You are going to have to start to fight for a little bit of space in the foam because we have such a dense base of greenery. Don't be worried if you hit the foam and it's not going in. Just try to get a little bit of a different placement. Just take your time with it. Sometimes you're gonna need to go in and actually look and see where the available foam is, but don't worry if it's starting to get a little full in there. That's really great. That means that you're doing it right and that your design is starting to get more developed and fuller. Continuing on with our placement of our focal roses, I am just going to work to connect all of the roses back into the arrangement. I'm gonna work in a grouping of three on this side and then just disperse it evenly throughout the arrangement with varying stem lengths. Don't forget to tuck some of your flowers into the interior of the arrangement. You don't want to glaze over this area and for it to feel kind of empty or that it doesn't have the same dimension as the rest of the design does. So make sure that you address that. I'm gonna eat my words a little bit here. This is probably the only point in the design that I do go vertically down into the foam, but all other placements will be at a slight angle. So just make sure that you continue on with these roses fighting for foam space, there we go. At this point in the design, don't worry if it's starting to feel a little disjointed again. We've got more focal flowers to use and other detailed flowers and filler flowers as well. So don't panic when you start placing the flowers and think, oh, this isn't quite looking how I want it to look. Of course not, because we don't have all of our colors, we don't have all of our dimensions. So just keep going, just keep designing when you hit those roadblocks of, I'm not sure how I feel about this. That's totally normal, just keep going. When I'm designing this, there is a portion of the arrangement that's facing you and then there's a portion of the arrangement that's facing me. Sometimes it's hard for you to see if I'm designing on what would be the back of the arrangement. So I am gonna start placing some flowers, but that's why we always turn so that you'll be able to kind of see that there are flowers in varying locations. This portion is pretty empty, so I wanna make sure that I get this color on this side of the design. Remember to turn your arrangement so that you don't focus so heavily on one portion that you forget the back or the other side of it. We are gonna be finishing up this variety of our focal flower and then we're gonna move on to a different color of focal flower. It's also gonna be a rose, but I wanted to show you what I was talking about a little bit earlier where designs can feel a little tense, like right here. So I wanna come in with my rose and just make sure that that color is represented right there in the design. It doesn't need to be tucked in. It doesn't need to be sticking out in any capacity. Just make sure that it fits within the whole design. Next, we're gonna move on to our other focal flower, which is this gorgeous Shimmer Rose. It has a beautiful contrast to the previous rose that we've used. In my designs, I really like to focus on highlights and lowlights and contrasting colors. I feel like it gives it more dimension. It makes it more dynamic and it overall kind of makes it look a little bit more professional. So in placing our focal roses, we're gonna take the same approach as we did with these focal roses, but I'm gonna group them a little bit more. These created a lot of surface area for the different color and the different texture. Now I want these, even though they are a focal point, I want them to be a little bit more focused. I don't want them to necessarily be evenly distributed. So I want something that maybe has a moment over here or over here that has a really special area that's just for this color. In working in the rule of threes, I'm gonna stair step this last rose down into the arrangement. I want it to be tucked down a little bit more into there. So you see how that has its little moment right here. I have fewer of these roses in the allotment than I did with the first round. So I wanna be really intentional on where I put these. I wanna make sure that these are gonna be seen, but that they're also breaking up this massive color right here too. So I'm gonna go where our lime flowers are and I'm going to create some highlights over here. Again, having varying stem length is going to be what makes your arrangement look a lot more professional and a lot more organic. That's when we get the moments of people being like, I cannot believe you guys did the flowers. And you're like, yeah, I totally did them. Did them myself and they look amazing. At this point in the arrangement, things are going to start to feel really full and really big. And that's a wonderful thing because it's a statement. But if you start to feel yourself feeling a little intimidated and you're not quite sure the next step or the next placement to make, take a step back, like a literal step back and take a look at the arrangement from a different vantage. If you have somebody there that you're really comfortable with them giving you feedback, have somebody stand across the room as you rotate the design and give you feedback as to, okay, well, hold on a minute, stop right there. There's a hole and you can come in and fill in that hole and have that back and forth with somebody that can see it from a distance that you can't. Because when you're so in the design and you're literally working within the arrangement, it's hard to really see the places that you might need to start focusing on a little bit more. So just take a step back, take a deep breath and take your time. When you find areas of the arrangement that are looking really dense and really full of greenery, try to cut your stem length a little bit shorter and tuck this rose or whichever flower you're using into the arrangement. When you do that, it helps break up that mass of greenery and really create some depth into the arrangement right there. Moving on, the next flower we're going to use is going to be one of our spray flowers. This is going to help break up these really big masses of focal flowers. A spray has multiple blooms along one stem. A focal flower has one large bloom at the end of the stem. And like I said earlier, the linear flower has a bunch of little blooms along the stem. So the sprays have a different scale to them. They have multiple blooms and it really helps break up the massive quantities that we feel. We have the big roses, we have the big leaves of the salal. So these come in and add another scale and they add another color. When working with sprays, you're going to have little satellites that you don't need to use. When you're placing it in the arrangement, it just might feel too bulky or it might not work. So if you want to take these off, I always recommend having a cup of water, a vase of water, a solo cup, whatever, as long as it holds water next to you so that you can place all these little blooms and little pieces of greenery, just little bits and pieces that you don't use. That way later on when you're working on boutonnieres, corsages, bud vases, what have you, you have all these little bits and pieces that you can use and that really helps extend your product and extend your budget. We are going to continue placing our sprays. These are going to be just little pops throughout the design. You want to place these to where it starts to break up the really big focal flowers. You are going to have to break down these stems a little bit. So don't be afraid to tuck these in a little more here and there so that you can see the little pops of that coming out of the design. When working with our sprays, like I've said the entire tutorial, don't hate me, you want to work in varying stem lengths. Shocking, I know. So you want to work in varying stem lengths. This is just going to help you get a different feel and break up all of these solid parts. So you want to keep this longer stem length and match some of the height that we have over here. And I think that that really breaks up the solid masses. It kind of talks a little bit to the large spur and the color and it just breaks up the color as well. So start to evenly distribute these. There are places and moments along the design that really do need something to break up these larger colors. So I'm going to come in here and just start addressing that. I think evenly distributing these is going to be another key point too. This isn't something that you have to worry that's going to feel like a polka dotted arrangement. I think if we had all of our roses evenly distributed, that would feel kind of like a polka dot throughout. You come up with the spray roses, they have such a different scale and the multiple blooms kind of breaks up the solidity of the arrangements. I'm going to come in over here and just cut off something. Also, you just see a hole. Fill in the hole with these sprays. They're really great at that. They're not necessarily a filler flower, but they do fill in holes perfectly. Save these guys. One thing I'd like to mention too, is you're focused so much on the top of the arrangement. Look at the side. So if you need to push the arrangement a little bit further away from you, then kind of look at the base of the arrangement. You'll start to see that some of the greenery starts to feel a little bit heavy down there. You need to come in with some of either your spray roses or different varieties and help break these moments up. It's getting a little solid. It's getting a little full. I can come in here with these carnations and give it a little bit more floral to help break up the solid greenery. In using our spray carnations or our mini carnations, these are such an affordable flower that I typically like to use 10 or more stems per arrangement. It's gonna help it feel full. It's gonna help it feel designed. And it's also not gonna break the bank. So feel free to use these more abundantly on this type of design because of the affordability of it. You don't wanna spend all of your money on really high priced local flowers and then have nothing left over to make the design feel cohesive. So when you are using spray flowers, the mini carnations are fabulous. Spray roses are great, but they're a little bit more expensive to use. But these mini carnations, they open up. A lot of times people don't even know that they're little mini carnations, so they're fabulous. If you have a carnation or a mini carnation and it hasn't quite opened up yet, not a big deal. Just give the base a little bit of a squeeze and then just feather out the flowers, or pardon me, the petals, just like that. And it'll open up beautifully. Don't worry, you're not gonna hurt it. These guys are workhorse flowers. So you just give the base a squeeze and flip out the petals. Now that we've got our spray roses placed, we're gonna be moving on to a different spray flower. These are really, really beautiful chrysanthemums. They are also a spray flower, but they have a very different color, a very different texture. And when you're working in this scale of the design, it's okay to use multiple types of the same variety like we did with our roses, which are our focal flower, and like we're doing with our sprays between the mini carnations and the mini months. Moving on with these sprays, you don't really need to worry about covering the floral foam. Our mechanics, which are the floral foam and the cage, are already well covered by all of the greenery and all of the flowers. So right now, what we need to do is just focusing on distributing these evenly and just creating more depth and more dimension and making this feel more like a large-scale statement piece. So sticking these throughout and rotating your piece is gonna be super helpful. We are so close to being done, but you don't wanna stop too short and you don't want to kind of fall flat. You really want to have these in there for their difference in color, and they just add a different texture already. I'm starting to see these pop out and they really create some continuity between the color of this rose and the color of the shimmer rose. And then it just looks really beautiful with the highlights of the mini carnations and our lisianthus. Make sure that you clean up your stems all the time. You can either do this before you start designing or as you go, but make sure that before you insert anything into the floral foam, that it has just a really clean stem and a sharp point that you've snipped at an angle. Always moving the arrangement around. It's just gonna help make sure that you haven't missed anything. I think that we've greened this to the point that we're really not gonna have any floral foam showing. I think, too, that it's always great to have more of the greenery that just makes it feel bigger and lush. But if you start to see any of these moments where it just feels solid, that's gonna be the point. You're not really looking for holes. You might just be looking for solid places to break up the color. And again, if you place that like I just did and it was too long and it didn't work out, don't be afraid to take another stab at its placement. So if something is too long, just take it out and cut it a little bit shorter. I see a little bit of a hole right here, and I think this would be a great place to put in some of these spray chrysanthemums. And then I think we'll be really close to moving on to our filler flower. Taking one last turn, taking one last spin. I think everything is feeling really full. It's kind of hard for me to turn it on the Lazy Susan because you can kind of feel the drag of the greenery and the weight of the arrangement on it. So that's always a good sign. It always feels really good to get to this point because that means we are almost done. So hang on, we're almost there. We are about to cross the finish line. We have made it to the final stages of the design, which is our filler flower. This is my absolute favorite. This is Wax Flower. It smells phenomenal. It doesn't necessarily, the bloom doesn't smell, but whenever you're cleaning up the stem and you want to take off all these little pine needles or these little needly leaves, smell your fingers afterwards, and it is heaven. It is absolute heaven. So these smell fantastic whenever you're cleaning up the stems. And it's one of my favorites, but it also has these beautiful tiny little blooms that is great for filling in spaces, hence the name filler flower. So what we're going to do, this is an entire bunch, which I don't think we're gonna need the entire bunch for this. So I'm gonna take half of this and we are going to use this to go in and place pretty much anywhere you want in the design. What I'm looking for are little holes in the design, something that needs just a little something extra. There's no real reason except for, I feel like it needs a little bit more. That is when you go in with your beautiful filler flower and put those in those little places that for some reason your gut's telling you it needs something. So listen, with our wax flower, they are going to have some little needly leaves. You don't have to make sure that all of the leaves are cleaned off on the offshoots, just the portion that you're going to be placing in the foam, that needs to be clean. But don't spend your time cleaning up the rest of it. So what I'm gonna do is just go into our design and just tuck these flowers in. These aren't necessarily meant to be a big statement piece or a big moment. They are literally to fill in holes, break up big spaces of greenery, break up some color, add a different scale and add a different texture. So these aren't supposed to be something that you really need to hyper focus on and really worry about their placement. Just go in and as their name says, fill in your arrangement. I am going to continue to turn this arrangement and put these here and there. There is no rhyme or reason to these. This is like butter or chocolate morsels. You measure this with your heart. You don't care if there's like a specific ratio. You just put this in where it makes you happy and you fill in to your heart's delight or until you've ran out of what's in your recipe. But just go in and start tucking these down into your arrangement. And I mean, tuck them in. You're not gonna have, like I said, really tall moments like our line flowers. You can tuck these in and that way, it just helps create some depth in the arrangement and it can cover up a little bit of your mechanics. Some longer pieces like this, you can keep a little bit long kind of on the edge of your arrangement right here to fill in right there. And it might be easier to focus maybe on one side then rotate to the other side. Since I'm designing away from myself, I'm gonna have to work on the back of the arrangement first. But if you're just looking through here and there, again, it really doesn't have much of a rhyme or reason just to tuck it in. As long as there's not another flower in its place, it's doing its job. And don't forget the sides of your arrangement. I know that we're supposed to be arranging this for a 360 view, but if we're being honest, everybody always fix the front. My front is facing you right now. So this technically would be my side. So don't forget your sides and don't forget the base of the arrangement either. It's really covered up by a lot of greenery, which is great. But if you go in and you add a few hints of the wax flower or your filler flower, it just makes it more dynamic. Once you've got your pieces cut, go ahead and strip those down. If you need to group a few pieces together to make it a little bit larger, that's okay too. Just make sure you give a clean snip and go ahead and tuck it in. All right, everyone. We have completed our barrel design for your wedding ceremony or event space. This large statement piece may feel intimidating at first, but just take your time, work in layers, and it'll turn out beautifully. We cannot wait to see what you guys create. Send us all your photos. And if you have any questions, put them in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching our tutorial. If you found this helpful, head on over to our website, bloomcultureflowers.com, where we have tons of DIY resources. You can book a consultation with us or you can shop our pre-curated collections. Because with Bloom Culture, we want you to DIY with confidence. Cut. Yes!