After a long hiatus, I'm back on the blog with a floral DIY post, with special thanks to Native Poppy for gifting me a lovely e-course for some weekend floral therapy!
Link to E-Course: Floral Arranging 101 E-Course
Cost: $99 includes anytime access to 7 lessons (one hour of video content) so that you can learn at your own pace.
Hours: On demand and accessible whenever you want a floral refresher.
Notes: Aesthetically pleasing tutorial videos broken down into organized stages of floral arrangements - easy to follow and beautiful to watch! Also loved the handy "Floral Arranging 101" PDF list of flower ingredients, tools, and supplies. In addition, Native Poppy has a few free courses that you can check out for floral knowledge and to help decide if you'd be interested in purchasing one of their e-courses!
Recommended: whether you're a floral newbie or a seasoned DIYer, you'll have fun learning and trying your hand via Native Poppy's unique take on whimsical, garden-style floral arrangements!
Step 1 involves gathering all your floral ingredients and tools. Unfortunately, I couldn't take advantage of ordering Native Poppy's complete floral DIY kits (local to San Diego only), so I got creative and found my own fall-inspired color palette based on dahlias (the "Baby Dahl" shipment) from Farmgirl Flowers and greenery and flowers from Bristol Farms.
Given Native Poppy's floral philosophy, this was my first time working with chicken wire. I usually build my centerpieces freehand, which requires filling all spaces and building your own "grid" using interlocking stems of greenery or flowers. The beauty of using chicken wire is that it creates a grid for you, which allows you a little more freedom in letting pieces stand on their own, rather than in clusters. The flipside is chicken wire does take up some room within the vase, so I had to rein in my usual inclination of adding more and more to the arrangement because I simply ran out of room.
Without including any "spoilers" from the e-course, step 2 involved building out a shape using greenery and including some textured flowers, which for me, looked like this:
I usually use eucalyptus so it was really fun to switch things up based on what was available at Bristol Farms! Next, I added an "anchor" which is typically a less costly/showy flower, but since I had plenty of raw material in the form of roses, I picked a rose:
From here, I built out the rest of the arrangement using different "cast of characters" - focals, supporting characters, floaties, and arms, as explained by Native Poppy! Meg at Native Poppy is the instructor for this e-course and she did a lovely job of breaking down the different elements. It was super fun to explore a different school of thought regarding color theory and rules of thumb for arrangements. Although I was heavily influenced by my own habits, I did my best to venture a little bit outside of my usual comfort zone. This was the "front" of my arrangement:
And the "back":
And a quick vid that captures all 360 degrees:
Thanks so much, Native Poppy, for treating me to your lovely e-course! So fun to learn and enjoy the therapeutic effects of being around flowers. Thanks again and I'm looking forward to my next San Diego visit.
For some of my prior floral DIY posts, check out this Thanksgiving centerpiece, a two-way holiday DIY (three minis vs. one medium centerpiece), and a Valentine's inspo arrangement.