DIY Farmers Market Flower Bouquet

Hi Creators! Sorry, it's been a while, but I'm back and ready to create more fun and easy DIY crafts. 

So, I wanted to share with you an activity I participated in last year, Memorial Weekend, for the Folk Life Festival in Seattle, Washington. It was thanks to the Hmong Association of Washington, I had the pleasure of hosting a DIY Flower Bouquet Workshop. Our goal was spreading awareness about the Hmong Community and it's Flower Farms in Washington State. 

Here's a short summary about mother's flower farm and my experience. 

My mother's flower business is Home Make Gardens and we are a family operated flower farm located in Carnation, Washington. We have about 5 acres (soon to be 12 acres) of flowers and sell them at local farmers markets. Established in 1999, Home Make Gardens was founded by my mother, Yeu H., who was a full time stay at home mom with eight children. It started out as a small vegetable garden and has grown into a flower farm throughout the years. I’ve been arranging flower bouquets every summer for the last 18 years. I arranged my first bouquet when I was 8 years old and from then on, gradually grew my passion for flowers. My experience has shown me what hard work and determination can really achieve. My mother, a Hmong women who had to care for eight children, was an immigrant, had no education, and yet she was able to start her own business in America and provide for her family, is really such a powerful and inspiring accomplishment.

DIY Farmers Market Flower Bouquet

So, I’d like to mention some precautions for this DIY. You'll be working with sharp pruning scissors so I advise you to use them cautiously and secondly, if you have allergies to certain flowers, don't use them and or fragrant flowers with lots of pollen.

I’d also like to mention that there is really no wrong or right way to arranging a bouquet. This is just the bases on how I arrange them and what I have learned over the years that has worked efficiently for me in a fast past environment like the farmers markets.

The materials you will need to arrange your own farmers market bouquet are..

• gloves
• pruning scissors
• fresh flowers (babies breath, fillers & main flowers)
• news paper or scrap paper
• rubber bands
• plastic bag
• wrapping paper (we use butcher paper roll)
• water

Step One Creating a base. First, gather a few branches of babies breath to form a round circular shape. Next, add in greenery to your baby’s breath. The goal is to evenly distributed the greenery to enhance the circular round shape. Note, if you are allergic to babies breath please only use greenery. Here’s a tip for holding the stems for the bouquet. You want to grip it tight enough so it won’t fall out of place, but not too tight that your hands start hurting. What you can do to make it easier is after every step you can trim the stems and rubber band them together so they won’t fall out of place.

Step Two The next step is to have a center flower. Now this flower is usually a larger or bulky flower. It goes in the center/middle of your base and will be the focal point of your bouquet and will be used as a guide for us to work around. (In this photo I used a peony! They are perfect center flowers during late spring, early summer when they are in bloom.)

Step Three The third step is to fill in the corners. What you want to do is imagine a triangle surrounding your center flower. You want to fill in the corners of your triangle. I usually use the same type of flower and color. Next, you want to repeat this step and fill in the empty spaces now visible which should be an upside down triangle. (I used different color irises. Yellow irises to fill one of the triangle corners and purple irises to fill in the other triangle corners.) You can trim the stems and rubber band them together to keep them in place.

Step Four Add fillers between the gaps. Since there are little gaps in between the bouquet you can use fillers to make the bouquet look more full. Filler flower are usually smaller bloom flower like Sweet Williams. You can use different colors and distribute them in your bouquet. Once you are done filling in the gaps you can trim the stems to the length you desire and rubber band them together and then you are done arranging your bouquet!

Step Five What we like to do at the farmer’s market is put the flowers in bags of water and wrap them to keep them fresh as you transport them home. So, you will need sheets of newspaper, make sure its two to three layers thick and wrap it around the stems. Next, you want to place the stems in a plastic bag and add a cup or two of water in the bag making sure the stems are submerged the water. Now, you can rubber band the bag to the stem. Lastly, is wrapping your bouquet. Cut out a piece of wrapping paper usually 18 x 20“. Cut the bottom, in the middle, of the paper about 6 inches up and create a Y shaped incision. Lay your bouquet in the center of the wrapping paper and grab the bottom corner and pull it toward the stems. Let the paper shape around the bouquet while you hold it together and do the same to the other bottom corner. Rubber band the bouquet one last time and you are done! Here's a short chip of the workshop!

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