Gardening with a Black Thumb: How to Arrange Silk Flowers

Reader Contribution by Eileen Troemel
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Residing in rural Wisconsin, by day Eileen Troemel work as a clerical worker and part-time student. At night she spends her time writing. Raised on a farm, she has a love for nature and is inspired by the beauty and power she finds there. Nature and her just don’t get along though as she has the blackest of black thumbs.

I wasn’t a big fan of silk flowers because I thought they looked cheap. However, my daugher Vicki has changed my mind completely on this topic. Working with her to create a variety of arrangements has shown me that they aren’t cheap looking. Another advantage is that the cost is not huge and it is easy to do. Here are a few steps for getting an arrangement together. 

I used pots in this example, but you can use anything. My daughter got a fresh flower arrangement in a teacup. When they died, she just got some bright silk flowers, stones and did a quick arrangement.

As I said last week here is the simple list of items for these projects:
• A container to put the silk flowers in
• Silk flowers of your choice
• Glass stones, real stones, (optional – if you use a colored vase these are necessary)
• Wire cutters (flower specifically)

I spent $15 and got enough silk flowers for two arrangements. Flowers often come with several flowers on a stem.

You can cut these apart so you can have more flowers to work with. 

If you don’t cut them apart, you can spread out the flowers on a stem. Simply bend them the way you want them. Spreading them out like this allows you to feed other flowers in between.

Place your flowers in how you want them. You can do just one flower type in a vase like the tulips my daughter did.

Or you can mix and match as takes your fancy. With the creamer pitcher and vase I had I made the two arrangements from five bundles of flowers. 

These flowers give my rooms a pop of color and touch of the outdoors. I get flowers all the time. When I’m bored with the arrangement, I simply take it apart and rearrange. I can go buy more flowers–different types or colors. If my daughter’s cat knocks them over then I don’t have water everywhere or dead flowers. Best of all, I get flowers without there being an issue of me killing them.

  • Published on Feb 19, 2012
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