Making Dried Flower Arrangements

Choose Wisely

• Dried flower arrangements can be tricky to arrange. The flowers tend to be fragile and brittle, and sometimes the arrangements come across looking dusty and dead rather than interesting and vibrant. To combat this, you need to think a little differently than you would if creating a live flower arrangement.
  
  First of all, choose only two or three colors to focus on. This will keep your arrangement looking purposeful rather than like someone just randomly dried up a fresh bouquet of flowers. Secondly, instead of green foliage for your filler, you will need to use baby's breath (a tiny white flower) or moss. Both are great fillers for dried flower arrangements, and they will not turn brown like most other foliage. Finally, consider making your arrangement wide and short rather than tall and thin, like most fresh flowers. This is because foliage does not dry well, and dried flowers that are tall tend to look spindly and sickly. It is better to focus on the dried blooms than the stems and leaves.
  
  

Arrange

• Begin by placing floral foam in the bottom of your container or vase, just as you would a fresh arrangement, the difference being that you don't need to wet the foam. Next, arrange your flowers. Choose dried flowers that have the biggest blooms possible. Place the biggest blooms in the middle of the arrangement. Depending on the effect you are going for, you can put them close together or leave space for filler in between them. For example, a sophisticated look would be for dried roses to be packed closely together in the middle in a circle, then surrounded by a dried flower of another kind and color, then surrounded by baby's breath.
  
  

Finish

• Finish your arrangement by filling in the spaces with baby's breath. Using a hot glue gun, attach moss to any parts of the floral foam that may be showing. If you wish, attach a ribbon to the border of the container as well, or tie a ribbon around the vase, just below the rim. You could even hot glue rose buds around the edge for a really unique look. Be creative!