I’ve always wanted to attend a floral workshop but was too cheapskate to fork out $300+ for a professional course when I just wanted to have a taste of what it is like to be a florist.
Putting flowers together and tying them up can look pretty effortless, but it’s quite tiring for newbies who haven’t mastered the art of flower-holding.
The last time my hand ached so much was many years ago playing cherki (where cards are held in a opposite arrangement compared to poker cards).
It’s not as easy as it looks, but A Better Florist had a good teacher, Teacher Shirleen, who knew how to bring us through the ropes and share many useful tips.
I won’t spill the beans of all the tips she shared to be fair to those who took the time to attend her course, but here are a couple of tips which I found useful.
Tips from A Better Florist’s floral workshop
Ruffling out petals to make flowers look bigger
Suaku me thought that bigger flowers were more ‘ripe’ than smaller flowers, as they bloomed earlier like roses. But Teacher Shirleen showed us how to ruffle carnation flowers to look bigger.
Carnations are beautiful flowers to give mothers, and these pretty pastel pink flowers were the centrepiece of my bouquet, which was supposed to be a heart of white flowers with roses and carnations in the middle, but things can turn out quite differently when you’re in the act of making the bouquet.
We also got sponges to rehydrate the flowers!
Taping the stems together to hold the flowers in place
Teacher Shirleen showed us how to tape the stems at the right place to prevent the flowers from sliding up or down when our hands get too tired from holding the flowers.
Professional florists can make bouquets in around 10 minutes, while we took an hour to decide which flowers we wanted, what stems and leaves to trim off and how to arrange them.
That’s also what you are paying for in a bouquet, not just the flowers, but the skill in creating the floral creation. Just because it only takes them 10 minutes doesn’t mean they learnt the skill in a day hor.
This would never pass for a quality bouquet, but it’ll doTeacher Shirleen was very patient and helpful in guiding the class of mainly ladies with a few men, on the art of making a beautiful floral bouquet.
You can check out more information about A Better Florist’s floral classes here.
Special thanks to A Better Florist and Teacher Shirleen for sharing tips on how to create a floral bouquet.