How to Make an Arrangement with Fresh & Faux Flowers

You know how it goes. You have beautiful fresh flowers and greens from the garden, farmers market or grocery store and start to create a lovely arrangement. Maybe it is for a dinner party or special occasion. Or maybe it is just to enjoy and brighten up a corner of the house. You carefully clip and curate the flowers and place them in the vase one by one. You tuck in the greenery and maybe a few sprigs of fresh clipped wildflowers. And then you step back to admire your work and notice something is missing. The arrangement isn’t full enough, tall enough, wide enough or just plain interesting enough. But you are out of fresh flowers… so what do you do? Run back to the market for another bunch or two… or shop your secret stash of realistic faux to mingle in?

Real and Faux Flowers

I am not talking those dollar store type flowers that crunch and crinkle and look and feel like they are faux. I am talking about real touch, hyper realistic flowers. I have sourced some of the most lovely faux flowers that even I get surprised that they are faux. Did you know that those real touch flowers are some of the ones we use in our Blooming Bouquets that we sell in the shop? When you tuck in a few good quality faux – it is hard to tell that they aren’t real.

And the mix of fresh and faux makes all the difference.

Can you tell they are Faux?

You tell me… this arrangement is full of delightful peach Juliet roses, creamy white patience roses and ruffly white peonies. What do you think…are the flowers in this arrangement faux or fresh?

Both. The roses are fresh, the peonies are faux.

This was from my first book and was working on a quick turnaround deadline to get the living room mantel photographed. I had a bunch of the roses, stock and statice on hand but a lot of the roses were too wilted to include so I did not have enough to fill the vase and create the magic on the mantel. So, I scoured my favorite faux flowers for some fillers and tucked 6 faux peonies in.

They filled in the arrangement beautifully. Between the fresh eucalyptus and roses scent filling the room and their realistic look- they mixed so perfectly you could not tell they were fake. I left the flowers on the mantel to enjoy all week long and actually didn’t even remember they were faux until the roses squished and I went to change the arrangement.

Non Negotiables for Mingling Fresh & Faux

1. Use fresh flowers with a lovely scent. Think roses, stock, lilac, etc. – anything that brings in that scent and delights.
2. Use fresh greens if you have them available. Eucalyptus smells wonderful and has such a lovely drape in an arrangement. You can also clip fresh foliage from your yard to tuck in. It brings both a visual freshness and the scent to the arrangement.
3. Use high quality realistic faux flowers. Forget the dollar store or bargain bins- if you want to your flowers to convincing- you need the highly realistic faux.

What do you think of mixing fresh and faux flowers? Is that something you would do? Or is it all fresh or all faux all the way for you?

Stay tuned for the next designs in our Blooming Bouquets coming your way soon. And of course, if you Love flowers like I do- don’t forget to Pre-order a copy of my new book In Bloom. And grab a copy of my ebook ‘Flower Magic‘ to enjoy before the shop closes for restock. Click the photos below to shop both.

Happy Friday everyone.

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