Fun Summer Activity: Bouquet Making in the European Style or a Short Tutorial on Hand-Tied Bouquet Making

Do you like to work with flowers? Learn how to create European style hand-tied bouquets, from choosing the right flowers to the actual design.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) August 26, 2006 -- The European style bouquet or hand-tied bouquet is the predominant bouquet-making technique in Europe. Customers would just walk into their local florist shop, select a few flowers they like and the florist would create a beautiful bouquet right in front of them.

Although this technique is simple and fast to learn, the European style is not widespread in the US, where florists still compose the traditional vase arrangements. This short tutorial will help you to create your very own hand-tied flower bouquet. You can use your hand-tied bouquets for gift giving, decorating for parties or simply to beautify your home.

About Flowers
The most crucial part of flower arranging, besides the design and right combination of flowers, is the quality of plant material used. It is easy to get overcharged on aged blooms unless you can recognize a flower in good condition. Most flowers should be bought in bud stage with the color showing through. Exceptions are gerbera and daisies, which are sold fully-grown and open.

These days almost all flowers are available year round. However, it does make sense to stick to seasonal flowers, as they are especially fresh and inexpensive while they are in season.

Here is a rough guideline for flower availability and seasonality:

- Spring bulbs, such as tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths are widely available in spring between the months of February and May.
- Peonies can be bought between April and the beginning of June for a really good price.
- Sunflowers are native in the US between July and October.
- Dahlias are available in early fall.
- Roses, lilies, iris, gerbera and daisies, in fact all chrysanthemums, are available year round for approximately the same price. However, prices for flowers, in particular roses, increase two or threefold during Valentine’s Day season.

Focal Flowers, Filler Flowers and Greenery
Every traditional hand-tied bouquet is made of at least one type of focal flower, one or multiple types of filler flowers and one or multiple types of greens. I would define a focal flower as a larger single stem flower, its head being at least one inch in diameter such as roses, gerbera, mums (= single stem Chrysanthemums), iris etc.

Filler flowers on the other hand usually feature several smaller heads and buds on one stem. Widely available filler flowers are Baby’s Breath, Montecasino Asters, Statice, Limonium, Mini-Carnations, Daisies (= spray Chrysanthemums), Solidago, etc.

Greens are pretty self-explanatory. They do not have any floral element on them other than perhaps small berry-like seeds such as those found on seeded Eucalyptus and Pepper berries. Greens are used to round out the bouquet and as a support structure on the outside of the bouquet. Their different shapes and shades of green can be used for great design elements.

European Style hand-tied bouquet
The three basic flower-arranging techniques are foam arrangements, vase arrangements and hand-tied bouquets. In the following we want to focus on the hand-tied bouquets.

As the name suggests, those bouquets are arranged in your hand instead of in a container. This way you can select the best fitting container or vase, once your “art work” is completed. Another advantage is that it is a lot faster to assemble and you can always change your mind and start over, which cannot as easily be done with a foam arrangement. Finally, you can simply wrap your bouquet in a nice paper or cellophane wrap and bring it as a gift.

Step by step bouquet making

Tools of the trade:
-Cutters or florist knife
-Bindwire
-Rose De-thorner to cut the thorns

Clean the flower stems by stripping all foliage below 7" off the tip of the flowers. Use a rose de-thorner for the roses. Above the 7” mark, take off all leaves and flower petals that are broken, turning brown or are otherwise damaged.
1.   Place each flower stem about 45 degrees in front of the previous one, so that you create a spiral form. Simply cross the previous stem, the flower head always facing to the left.
2.   After every new stem you add, turn the bouquet about ¼ turn in your hand.
3.   The final bouquet should have a round shape, looking at it from the side. You achieve this by positioning each additional flower a bit lower than the previous one.
4.   Cut off the ends of the stems. The total bouquet length depends on the container you will use. It is crucial that all the flower stems have the same length, so that they can be hydrated and the bouquet stands upright in the vase.
5.   There should not be any leaves below the point where you hold the bouquet in your hand - where the stems criss-cross at about 7” to 8” below the tips of the tallest flower heads in the center of the bouquet. Here the stems are tied with a wire tie. Cut a piece of wire about 8” to 10” and wrap it twice around the stems, fasten it by twisting the ends a few times. Cut off the loose ends and bend the twisted wire so that it is less visible.
6.   The true test of every hand-tied bouquet is to see whether it will stand on its own, without the support of a container. If it does, you know that you have done a good jobJ.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on European style hand-tied bouquet making. If you want to send flowers in the European style out of town, please go to http://www.beyondblossoms.com.

Gina Maschek is co-owner of http://www.beyondblossoms.com. Buy flowers in the European style that are farm fresh. Send flowers such as roses, lilies, daisies, sunflowers, and more nationwide.

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