Arranging Artificial Flowers

1)     Artificial materials and the dry-foam in which they are arranged are quite light in weight, so always weight your container with sand, pebbles or gravel at the bottom, to give greater stability. If using a clear container, add marbles, layers of interesting pebbles, or shells to hide the foam and give stability.

2)     Use wire cutters to shorten stems, as scissors may not be strong enough. Stems can be lengthened by using wooden floral picks (floral picks are wooden sticks that come in different lengths, and have wire loops at the top. By wrapping the wire loop around the short stem you have the additional length of the wooden stick to use as the flower stem) or use an offcut of another stem of similar thickness and colour. The offcut can be attached with a stub wire, then taped with green or brown floral tape (the crepe sort works best for this, as it tends to be stickier, and doesn't slip whilst you're working with it).

3)     Never use bare stub wires in an arrangement. This looks very unprofessional. Use green annealed wires or tape the wire using florists' stem tape.

4)     Artificial plants, pre-formed artificial bouquets and foliage can be split into single stems for individual arrangements, or smaller designs like corsages, headdresses and boutonnieres.

5)     Think about the way each type of flower or foliage would usually grow, and gently arrange the stems of the flowers and leaves so that they look natural, before inserting them into the foam.

6)     When using clear containers, add marbles, layers of interesting pebbles, shells, raffia, pot-pourri or moss (natural or dyed) to hide the foam.

7)     If your arrangement is to be permanent, then dip stems in pan glue, white glue or hot glue before inserting them into the foam for greater stability and permanence.

8)     Some artificial materials can be swished in warm soapy water to clean them, then rinsed in clear water, but to avoid any problems, and to save having to rearrange the design, regularly use a hairdryer on a low setting to blow off any dust from the arrangement.