I just love decorating my home with large silk floral arrangements and have made several large arrangements for the various seasons and holidays to decorate the right hand side of my dining room fireplace which is 41" by 48". It's a large area to cover so it requires a large floral arrangement to fill it up.
I was unhappy with the floral arrangement I had made several years ago to cover the spring and summer seasons and wanted to change it. I wanted the colors to be bright and cheery and already had several dark blue, light blue, burgundy, and white silk floral I was going to re-use.
I decided that I needed to add pink, royal blue and some other whites to the mix so last weekend I bought several 3' to 4' silk floral stems I thought might be suitable.
For my large silk floral I like to add large silk floral grass stems, pussy willow stems, silk eucalyptus leaves stems, and white reed stems as filler.
I also like to surround the bottom of the arrangement with small groups of leaves and flowers and had several that I thought would be suitable for this arrangement.
The arrangement I didn't like had a large ceramic pot that had been a Christmas present several years ago as a base but I felt it made the arrangement too heavy to carry so I decided to use a large basket that I had spray painted colonial blue several years ago as the new base.
I filled the center of the basket with two layers of four green floral foam blocks that I trimmed with a knife to conform to the shape of the basket and be within 1" to 1 1/2" of the basket rim. You can glue the foam to the bottom of the basket and then glue the foam blocks to each other but I prefer not to as it makes it hard to re-use the basket and the foam if it's all glued together. Plus, sometimes the glue makes it difficult to insert the silk floral stems.
I never throw anything away and even save the bottoms of any silk floral stems that I may have cut because they were too long. I use these to hold the green floral foam blocks together. And, they become very handy when you need to lengthen a silk floral that is too short. So, I added four cut off stems to hold the four blocks together and then cut the tops to make them level with the foam.
I always add filler, leaves, and small flowers to cover the rim of the basket so I keep the top of the foam 1" to 2" below the top rim of the basket.
I also never throw any of the green floral foam that I've previously trimmed from various projects away and have a large supply ready to use for filling in the sides of the baskets. I trim the foam so it completely fills the basket and is secure enough not to move.
Instead of using moss to cover the foam so it isn't visible through the basket I add shredded paper that you'd use to fill an Easter basket.
I filled in around the sides of the basket and then added enough to cover the top of the foam.
I added 9 grass stalks that I spread out of cover the top of the basket.
Next,, I added several clusters of large leaves around the rim of the basket.
In the middle I put white reed stalks that were bendable.
Then I added three large 3' eucalyptus silk floral stems - one in the middle of the basket and one each on the ends of the basket. These would serve as a gauge for the overall height of the basket..
I added three 3' blue hydrangea silk floral just behind where I had inserted the 3' eucalyptus silk floral stems.
I then added four 3' pink peony silk floral stems on the left and right sides of the blue hydrangea on the ends of the basket.
Then I added six 3 1/2' white daisies - 3 evenly spaced on each along the length of the basket.
To this I then added two burgundy peony silk floral in between the three blue hydrangea.
Four 3' purple and white daisies were added - two for each side of the basket to the left and right of the pink peonies.
To this group I then added six 3 1/2' dark blue delphinium - 3 on each side evenly spaced among the silk floral that were there.
As I like my silk floral arrangements to be full I then added four royal blue silk floral daisies and four light blue silk floral daisies. I also decided to add one additional burgundy peony so I had three burgundy peony evenly spaced within the center of the basket.
To fill in the bottom of the basket I added twelve white floral about 18" - 24" in height.
As I'm going along I keep turning the arrangement around and around to make sure my silk floral are evenly spaced and there are no holes that need to be filled. In turning the arrangement around and around I decided to add two white peony on the left and right sides of the blue hydrangea in the center of the basket.
I also tend to like billowing arrangements so I added several 3 1/2' pussy willow stalks and several 3 1/2' white reed stalks until I was happy with the way the arrangement looked. The final step was to pull some of the silk floral out a little further so the flowers were at various heights as a fresh floral arrangement would be.
I was happy with the way the floral arrangement looked in the fireplace. It was very colorful and definitely filled up the area.
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and like how my large floral arrangement came out.
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