A hand-tied bouquet

Creating and Displaying

A Hand-Tied Bouquet

Making a dried flower bouquet is quite different to creating one with fresh flowers. With fresh blooms, you can use vibrant green fronds and leaves as a base for your arrangement, but with dried flowers you don't have this option. Instead, focusing on texture and movement is the best way to make your bouquet turn heads.

While you will want to focus on adding volume and body to your bouquet, as I've said before, less is more, so make sure not to add in too many different varieties.

For this display, I chose to work with:

• Cress seed heads
• Quaking grass (Briza media)
• Flax (Linum usitatissimum)
• Lady's mantle (Alchemilla mollis)
• Strawflowers (Helichrysum bracteatum)
• Statice (Limonium sinuatum)

Beginning with the Shape

As you build your bouquet, you will be using one hand to hold it at all times, while you feed stems in with the other hand. This takes practice, so don't worry if it takes time to get to grips with this technique.

The beauty of this method is that you can take stems out if you don't think they are sitting right in your bouquet. In order to do this, your stems need to be clean so that you can move them in and out smoothly.

To clean your stems:

• prepare all of your stems before beginning your arrangement
• remove any leaves
• use snips to take off any barbs or thorns

Criss-Crossing Your Stems

When you start to build your bouquet, you will need to work with your more textural stems to create the base shape.

1. Begin by holding your initial stems in a loose grip.
2. The aim is to criss-cross your stems, with them fanning out at both the bottom and the top – this will help to create an open and voluminous display.
3. Feed new stems in from the top or the sides.
4. Make sure to keep your grip relatively loose so you don't compact your bouquet and so it is easier to move stems in and out.
5. Once you've created the base, start feeding in your second material.
6. Aim to create balance within your bouquet, so there are stems in the middle as well as round the outside.
7. You can create height and depth within your bouquet by having your blooms at a different depth than your foliage.
8. As your bouquet gets bigger, the stems will begin to hold their shape and you will be able to loosen your grip a bit.
9. Add blooms to your bouquet at an angle, this will help maintain its open shape.
10. If you're working with more delicate blooms, then nestle them further down into your structure – this will ensure they are supported by the rest of your stems and will reduce the chance of breakage.
11. Stems with curves in them work well around the edges of your bouquet, as they will bring the structure out and create more body.

Thinking about the Colours You Want

• If you want to work with primary colours, picking just two or three will prevent your arrangement from becoming too busy and hectic.
• Make sure that your colours complement one another, as this will create harmony within your bouquet.

Finishing off Your Bouquet

• Trim your stems so that the longest ones are generally the same length – as they won't be sitting in water, it doesn't matter if some of the stems inside the bouquet are shorter.
• Secure your bouquet with string, aiming to tie it just as loosely as you were holding it in your hand – if you knot it tighter than this, you may ruin its shape.
• Once tied together, you can add a ribbon and secure it in a knot or a bow on your preferred side.