How To Make A Bouquet Using The Holly Chapple Egg

Hey, it's Allison with Bloom Culture, and in today's tutorial, we are going to talk about making a bridal bouquet with the assistance of a Holly Chapel egg. Now, I'm sure you're wondering what on earth is a Holly Chapel egg. Holly Chapel is an amazing floral designer who has come up with this little contraption right here. It looks like an egg to help you build a structure in your bouquet. So you may be wondering why I'm trying out this Holly Chapel egg, and it's because it makes it really easy to build a bouquet. Now, if you're new to this, like most DIYers are, this Holly Chapel egg really helps you build a foundation for your handheld bouquet. One of the great things about it is while you're working on it, if you need to, you can set it down, do something with the flower, go to the restroom, whatever you might need to do, and then come back and pick up right where you left off. I like to pull my recipe. If you're a Bloom Culture client, then you know that we create a floral recipe for you, and this is what that recipe is. It looks kind of like a hot mess now, but if we have two to three spray roses on there, pull three spray roses, trim off all of the greenery. If there are any thorns, get those cleaned off, and then put them all in one vase or all in one place so that you're not having to stop and start and stop and start and pull your flowers from the buckets, and it seems to take a little bit longer. So pull all of your flowers in your recipe into one vase. Okay, let's get started designing our bridal bouquet using the Holly Chapel egg. So I typically like to pull all of the greenery. I've allotted about a quarter of a bunch or a fifth of a bunch of the Salal Salal Generous, and I like to set that aside. The same approach or technique that I use with just a handheld bouquet is I like to start with greenery. So when you're inserting the stems into the egg, you'll always want to go at an angle. You won't just want to drop it in and call it a day. There'll be some moments where we do that, but it's not in the beginning. So I like to insert my stems at an angle, and then I like to hold the stem in place while I'm holding on to the egg. So let's see that up close. We like to insert the stem at an angle, hold the stems in place a little bit. It's just kind of putting pressure on it while holding the egg in place. Again, with most of our designs, I like to go with an X shape. So I'm gonna address the other side and layer in some greenery. Some stems are gonna be longer than others, and that's okay. If you want this to face forward, face backwards, you're gonna have a little bit of time to play with the placement and move things around. That's another great thing about this is that you can kind of tweak things as you go and even towards the end. So I'm gonna keep putting some of the greenery in. I typically like to stay above the rim while I'm inserting them, and then I'll address the bottom part, but it might already be covered up towards the end. See, there we already have a really great start and a really great foundation, and I don't feel like things are wobbly or that I can't hold it all together or that I'm squeezing it all together. It really gives me a really great shape right off the bat. So moving on, I like to place what I call some of our linear blooms. This is going to be a stock, a snapdragon, larkspur, delphinium, whatever your recipe has. I like to put in some of these blooms next. And working with the X pattern, just kind of let it balance in there. And if you need to thread it through just like that, go ahead. Again, continuing with that X shape and threading it through. And again, if you see that some of your greenery is covering it up, you can always move your greenery, but we can also do that at a later time. Once I've got a couple of those placed, I think I'm gonna stay right now with two, and if I want some more added in, I am going to move on to our spray roses. I like these because they have a small cluster of flowers in them. So spray means that there are multiple sprays on one stem. So when placing the sprays, again, working in your X pattern, don't forget you can push and pull. That's the great thing about this without having to move anything else around. You can push and pull these stems and place it where you think it might look really nice. Here is a great example of when you might need to take off one of these blooms and then save it in your, I almost called it a tip jar, save it in your small little vase of little extras that fall off that you can use for later for your boutonnieres, your corsages, flower crowns, bud vases, whatever you would like to use it for. Continuing with the spray roses. Now that I have some of those placed, I'm gonna move on to some of our bigger roses. Check out our rose spinning technique. I have already spun all of these roses so that they look absolutely gorgeous and open so that I'm not having to put my bouquet down, spin a rose, so on and so forth. Spin them before you start. That way they already are open and look really beautiful. One thing I like to do while designing is I like to work in threes with my roses. It creates a focal point with your focal flowers. One thing that I would suggest doing is staggering their length. So you don't want them all on the same plane. You want this one coming out a little bit more than the other two. Maybe this one's a little bit deeper and so on and so forth. So that way you get a little bit more dimension in there. Now I'm gonna come in with some of my darker roses. These are a new beautiful variety called toffee and I think they're absolutely stunning. One thing as I'm going is I'm noticing that I don't have some of the greenery up front that I will want. You don't want any part of that egg showing so if at any point you think I need to put something up front, go for it. And sometimes it's hard. I'm designing away from myself right now but make sure that you're facing yourself or that you're facing a mirror so that you can see exactly what you're doing and exactly how your bouquet's gonna turn out. See right there, I'm gonna take that rose out and just give it a different placement. Maybe cut some of the salal back. I think that deep color needs to be kind of dead center too. See how I'm pushing and pulling these? It's really easy for it to get all clumped and crumpled together so you can take this stem and push it in and pull it out. This rose, if you need to tuck it in and pull this one out above it, you can do that in this egg and it's really, really easy. Okay, so moving on, I think I'm gonna place some more spray roses. Maybe down over here would be a really nice place. See how I was able just to take this hand off and hold it with this hand and nothing moved? That was really, really helpful. And I tend to design holding the bouquet with my left hand and placing the flowers with my right so it's really great to be able to move back and forth, look at it from different directions and nothing's truly moving around. And if I see something, like I said, that rose that I want to move it a little bit, I can. One thing that I do a lot is cut the stems down while I'm working. It really just helps keep things more manageable and that way you can kind of hold it close to your body instead of having to hold it out like that. Sometimes tucking roses down behind one another really helps create that depth and makes a really beautiful shape. Now that I've got the foundation of my shape, it feels really sturdy and really solid. I am going to place some of my smaller detailed flowers. Right now, we're gonna be using some of these mini carnations. I absolutely love these because they just feel like little mini clouds, little mini peonies. They have a really great petal structure and just add a different scale. I have noticed that I haven't cleaned the stems up, but I'm not nervous because I'm gonna be able to put down my arrangement, clean up my stem and make sure that I've got everything that I need for the next part. Get my space a little bit more cleaned up, maybe give my hand a rest and then what's really great is I'm able to pick right back up where I left off and nothing's really moved. If it has, it's only slightly and you'll be able to just push and pull like I've shown you to get some of that shape back if it has moved at all. So that is one thing about this egg that I think is absolutely fabulous. So moving on to the little pops of the carnations, I feel like we're getting a little solid in the front. So what I'm going to do is come in with some of these different little scale pieces and maybe just put in a little bit of depth and a little bit of texture right there. I always make the joke that flowers are a lot like women. I've probably said this a million times, but they're not as delicate as people think or like to tell them they are. You can manhandle them if you will. That's really helpful. See how just a few of those little pops of the white and the different texture has really helped break that up a little bit. Put one probably front and center. So at this point, I'm going to go ahead and add in some of my eucalyptus. I didn't start with the eucalyptus because I love how it drapes and I didn't want that to be covered up. I wanted that to be really noticeable and maybe on the outside of the bouquet so I waited a little bit and I thought you know maybe now is a good time to go in and add some of that drape to the bouquet. You know you might see some spots in the front that could use some that really pretty eucalyptus. So I faced the bouquet towards myself. I just want to make sure that everything is looking really pretty well dispersed throughout the bouquet. I do see a hole or a gap right here that if you have some leftover blooms or some leftover greenery you know now it's the time to go ahead and put those those things in before we start really adding the final or finishing touches to the bouquet. I think this is starting to look absolutely gorgeous and I love love love the shape. So in moving forward with our design what I think would be best is if we started adding in some of our detailed pieces. In this design we've gotten some of this Pyrrhus or it's called Andromeda and I think this would be really gorgeous to add as a pop right in the front. I love how it drapes and I think it's just so pretty. Again don't be afraid to cut some of your pieces down if they're just too big or it just isn't working for your bouquet. Okay last but not least we are going to start placing these gorgeous butterfly ranunculus. These are such a light and delicate flower that I like to place them last so that they can have more of a whimsical feel to them and we can start layering them in without them getting smashed or without them getting hidden by some of the other blooms. Again looking for holes or areas in the front of the bouquet I think is a really wonderful place to start. Threading them through and playing with some of that whimsy feel to them. Absolutely gorgeous. One great thing about these is that they come multiple to a stem. It's not necessarily a spray but you do get a lot of bang for your buck when they're in season. Don't forget to clean up your stems. Sometimes I like to do it while I'm pulling the recipe. Sometimes I'm just not quite sure what parts of the ranunculus or flower I'll be using. I like to leave these with a little bit of length on them so that they can peek through and and weave through some of the other flowers. Again another great thing about the Holly Chapel egg is I have just been able to thread everything through almost as if I was doing a centerpiece or an arrangement like that. And now we are at the point that I would just give it another once over. When you're looking at it from the front make sure that you can't see the egg. You know a lot of people aren't gonna be looking at it from underneath so if you can see a little bit of the mechanics as I call it from underneath that's okay. You want to just make sure that when the bouquet is facing out that you aren't seeing any of that egg. Now one thing I do want to say that with in my design and if you have maybe a smaller bouquet or if you have fewer blooms to work with we typically have a front and a back and I always fill in the back with my greenery. So I haven't used all of the allotted greenery so now is the time that I go in and just cover up that egg so that you know if somebody is seeing it from the back even just one piece of salal right there covered up the majority of what I'm trying to hide but just go in with the rest of your greenery and kind of cover up your back if you will but that is a very normal thing to have when all is said and done. Here I think we've done a really great job of making sure that our front is beautiful and that the egg you can't see anything from behind. If you do have any more blooms left over in your recipe feel free to fill in the back as much or as little as you want. I think that the front is completely done so we have a couple more roses to fill in with so that's what I'm gonna do. Forget I can put it down. Okay I think that we are almost completely done with our bouquet. I'm gonna put a few more finishing touches in and then we are going to wrap it. So the interesting thing about wrapping this bouquet is that you've got a lot of different angles on your stems so the egg is there holding everything in place so you don't really depend on wrapping the stems to hold them in place but it is nice that that you do have a foundation under the egg where everything kind of comes together. So this is where I like to take my my quarter-inch waterproof tape and just gently and lightly tape everything at the base of the egg. Again this doesn't have to be a really tight wrap you just want to have a point at the base where you can hold your bouquet comfortably and that you can't feel some of the stems maybe adjusting or rearranging under everything. So I like to give this just a really gentle and quick wrap underneath. It doesn't have to look perfect or be perfect it's just again to give you a little bit of a foundation and a place to really help wrap your ribbon as well. At the end I like to trim my stems down. Okay guys we are done. I couldn't be happier with how this bouquet turned out. It's whimsical the flowers don't feel smushed together it's the shape that I was going for and it was so easy with the Holly Chapel egg. So we hope this technique works for you give us any feedback in the comments below any questions you have we're here to help you out. I'm Allison and this is Bloom Culture Flowers and thanks so much for watching.