How-to With Cut Fleurs

Ok...First, you need the flowers, greens, oasis, clippers and a pot or basket or whatever you want to use that will hold your flower stalks in your soaked oasis block.

Oasis is a brand of floral foam that comes in blocks and can easily be cut to size with a knife. You can find it at most garden centers, floral counters at the grocery store or florists... This is what the brick of oasis looks like:


Make sure the oasis fits snugly in the pot or vase. When I took my flower arranging classes, the teacher had us use floral tape over the top of the foam cross-wise to hold the foam in place. I find that if I cut the oasis big enough it stays put very nicely.

If you want to use a clear vase, make sure you get some flat-leaf greens, like banana leaf or something that can be wrapped around the inside of the vase to disguise the oasis underneath.

So here's what I started with:

Clippers. I really like fiskars. They work well on almost anything unless it's very woody. Then I use more heavy duty clippers.


These are the two pots I used. They have the cut oasis inside, soaked in water.


These are some of the greens I used. They are preserved eucalyptus. One is the seeded eucalyptus, the other is a flat-leaf variety.


Here is some preserved lemon leaf I had from last year and some cute twiggy things that I bought last year.


These are the varieties of flowers I bought. Pink tulips, white lilies, pink alstromeria, white spiky flowers that look like mini-asters, and several green poms.


When you start the arrangment, some people prefer to start with the greens and then add flowers. I do it the other way around! I start with my "focus" flowers in the center. This time, it's the white lilies. When you get the flowers, they generally have many leaves down the stalk. Strip the leaves off the stalk except those up near the flowers themselves. Here is the stalk:


Then here is what they look like after stripping the leaves and cutting them to size:


Next, I added the tulips around the lilies:


One trick I also learned is that assymetry is good. The arrangement should not look perfect and in using odd numbers of flowers, you accomplish that easily. Additionally, this was to be a centerpiece, so it should have a similar look, back to front, side to side. However, I always use odd numbers. There were seven liliies, 11 tulips, etc...

Then, it starts to really come together with the addition of the poms and white spiky asters:


Lastly, I add the greens until it looks full and you can no longer see any of the oasis. Here is the finished product from three angles:




That was the bigger arrangement I did for my husband's step-mom as a surprise. I also made one for our holiday table using the left over flowers. This was about mid-way through doing it:


And here's the finished product...For this one, I used the flowers and the seeded eucalyptus, some lemon leaf and the twiggy things for accents.



Hope you liked them!