We may be in the dog days of summer (yes, even here in Wisconsin) but fall will be here before you know it. And you know what? I am 1000% ready for pumpkin spice candles, cool breezes and beautiful autumn colors!
(To see the video tutorial click on the above image or right here)
Seems like a good time to start thinking about saying goodbye to summer colors and saying hello to aged yellows, burnt oranges, deep, rich burgundies, warm, cozy browns and more. Ready to get crafting? Great! Here’s what you’ll need:
The Greenery
Here’s what I used in my piece, in order:
- Lemon Green Hanging Artificial Greenery or Green And Yellow Boxwood Leaves. Or both!
- Faux Smilax
- Yellow Ginko
- Variegated Begonias
- Bleached Ruscus
- Sage Green Ruscus
- Orange/Yellow Ruscus
- Dried Natural Bunny Tails (Beware: cats LOVE playing with bunny tails!)
- Purple Setum
- Sparkle Fall Berries (The showstopper!)
- Dark Green Eucalyptus
Now that your greenery is gathered, we’re on to the next step:
The Flowers
Dye your flowers in the autumn color scheme of your choice. I used burgundy, cream (raw, undyed flowers), and few flowers with a muted pink color (because of course I did 😍) However, you can feel free to use what colors you like best!
The flowers I used for this bouquet are;
Once you have everything gathered, it’s time to start building your autumn bouquet!
The Extras
To really give this piece an extra fall vibe, we’re going to wrap our handle using stems from a corn broom and tie it off with burgundy ribbon. So exciting!
The Process: Filler
The first thing I should tell you is this - the greenery base is going to look like a hot mess for a while. Trust the process and I promise you, it will come together!
Let’s start building. Grab some greenery with a bit of a drape (like our lemon green hanging greenery or green and yellow boxwood leaves). These greenery options are perfect for our bouquet, but since they are a little on the floppy side, I like to use them to create a bottom base. To do this I criss-cross my stems all while fanning out the top. This should give you stability in your base and shape with your bouquet.
Once you’ve got a simple base, start building “up” a little bit to give it more volume and depth. Think of this as you making your 2D bouquet into a 3D masterpiece.
Now that you’ve gotten your base set up with our yellow-green filler, it’s time to start inviting our other greenery to play!
For adding these, I’d suggest giving everything a nice mix, but you don’t have to be too scientific about it. Add a little here, a little there, and keep tweaking and improving until you’ve got your look.
So: I added smilax into the mix. Then, I grabbed some of the longer orangey-yellow ginkgo leaves to start giving in a rich mix of fall colors.
Next, I added in some of our begonias. These begonias are nice and sturdy, so even though our base started with some more pliable options, these begonias should help give a healthy, strong backbone to our bouquet.
After that, I brought in some bleached ruscus. One thing to note, depending on how the ruscus was grown and harvested, sometimes it’s super soft, sometimes it can be a little spiky, so handle carefully! Another thing about the ruscus is that the stems are natural, meaning you can’t bend them as much as you can our faux greenery. All that to say, these are a little less forgiving of “edits.” Once they’re in your bouquet, that’s probably where they’re living.
Keep adding the greenery listed above here and there. At this point, your bouquet will qualify for a HOT MESS ALERT but as I mentioned at the beginning of this, trust the process and it’s going to come out fantastic!
Next, I brought in some of our dark green eucalyptus while touching it up with other colors of ruscus. Once I got the overall piece to where I wanted it to be, it was time to add what may be my favorite addition to this bouquet: bunny tails!
Bunny tails are so soft and natural. What’s even better is that while they’re somewhat resistant to bending, they do have a very nice pliability to them. This means that your bouquet will actually have some really nice eye-catching motion to it.
From here, add some purple sedum for pops of color, as well as our show-stopping sparkle fall berries to really give the piece some pop and shine!
Now that your greenery is ready, let’s get some flowers involved.
The Process: Flowers
Prior to this step, make sure you’ve painted the flowers recommended above with your favorite fall colors!
Give the colors a good mix, placing them throughout the bouquet to give the whole piece a nice, even look.
My favorite tips for making this portion go smoothly are as follows:
- Since much of your background already has greens, yellows, browns, and purples, don’t be shy to use cream/raw flowers to help give some order and organization to the bouquet
- Purple flowers next to yellow ginko will make this project absolutely sing like nobody’s business!
Once your flowers have been placed, it’s time for the final step.
The Process: Tying It Together
In order to begin wrapping up your piece, first grab a zip tie and give your poor hand a break! This will keep your arrangement tied together exactly as you’ve crafted it.
Next, clip your stems to your desired length. Then give this piece an extra autumn kick by wrapping your stems in corn broom! Adding the corn broom stems just feels like mid-October to me!
You’ll want to ensure your corn broom is held in place with vinyl tape. But, of course, vinyl tape doesn’t look or feel very autumn (or pretty in any season). So we’re going to cover it up with a burgundy ribbon to bring it back to our original autumnal theme. Wrap the ribbon around the tape, cut to your desired length, then cut the ribbon into an attractive “v” shape at the end to finish it up! (Hint: check out 17:02 of the video to see exactly how I do it!)
And there you have it! A bouquet that perfectly embodies the spirit of fall. Ready to get started on your own bouquet? Want to take your own spin on a fall bouquet? Just remember, you can find 150 styles of flowers as well as greenery galore all at ohyourelovely.com. Thanks for reading, and happy crafting!
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