Celedon & Celery Flower Arranging Class

I feel very lucky to have wonderful sisters-in-laws and I truly enjoy spending time with them. We have taken a cooking class, ate our way through several afternoon tea events, relaxed together for mani/pedis, and most recently, we took a flower arranging course by Celedon and Celery, a New York based event/floral planning company.

Celedon and Celery held a workshop in downtown Los Angeles inside Opulen Studios. We parked directly across the street in a $10 lot and walked over to 1309 Flower Street.

Entrance to Opulen Studios

There were about 15 stations set up along the perimeter of the room. Each station held our essentials: apron, paper towels, shears, rose thorn stripper, floral twine, a 6 by 6 vase (6 inches tall and 6 inches diameter), and some aspidistra (the green leaves).

An individual station

View of the room, looking towards the entrance

Assortment of flowers

The first thing we did was rub the leaves with a paper towel to distribute the natural oils. This added a nice sheen to the leaves. Tip: the oils have antibacterial properties, so lining the vase with the leaves helps flowers last longer.

Shiny Aspidistra

Aspidistra lined vase

To hold the arrangement in place, we skipped the foam and gridding tape. Instead, we inserted each stem at a 45 degree angle so that they eventually interlocked with each other.
Tip: when preparing a stem, cut at a 45 degree angle and shred the base of the stem by making vertical cuts up the stem. This helps increase the amount of water the flower can absorb.
Here are the basic steps to making an arrangement (not sure if it is viewable in google reader):

Aspidistras folded and bound

Fill vase with water

Start with 3 bunches of Hydrangeas

Add 3 Roses

Roses and Hydrangeas

Add Dahlias in the middle of a Hydrandea

Add Dusty Miller

Add Ranunculus and folded Aspidistra

Done!

We also made a quick hand bouquet using these flowers:

Hand Bouquet - Before

Hand Bouquet - After

The class was about 2 hours long and we each completed 2 arrangements. We were given a large fabric tote to carry everything home in. We loved the flowers that were used: roses, dahlias, ranunculus, lisianthus, calla lillies…all very feminine and popular type of flowers. There was a lot of technical information presented, but I feel like I forgot most of the details. The main things I took away from the class:

• Change the water daily.  Clean water is key to long lasting arrangements
• If you use the powder “flower food” packets, only use about 1/3 of the packet.  Too much will cause the flowers to bloom and die quickly.
• Strip all the leaves off of the stem so that they don’t rot in the water.

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