Spoiler Alert: Blake Lively’s Flower Arranging Hack Is SUPER Easy to DIY
You can keep your salacious celebrity gossip — we’ll take our star stories in the form of recipes and lifestyle hacks, thanks very much. Our site was abuzz when Reese Witherspoon announced her new brand Draper James and our morning commute got a new must-read author when Drew Barrymore became the editor-at-large for Refinery29. One of our favorite gals rolling up her sleeves to be our generation’s next Martha is Blake Lively, and whether it’s her baby name announcement or her cupcake-decorating tips, we want another serving of what she’s cooking up. Last week we got inspired by the star-gone-homemaker’s dive into flower arranging and noticed an easy hack for making Blake-worthy bouquets with just a trip to the grocery store. Let’s take a look at her pics first:
Blake IG’d a series of photos starting with her trip to the grocery store for a boatload of bouquets, which she then broke down.
Her results? Not bad!
She even had enough for a few vases.
As the resident floral designer at Brit + Co, I applaud Blake for her grocery store hack. It can not only be intimidating to go to a flower market, what with ALL those flowers to choose from, but it’s also expensive to buy the ingredients for an arrangement. Not sure what that means? I’ll break it down for you. Though any flower sitting in a vase is pretty, there is an art to designing a bloom-filled arrangement. We start with our greens to create a base for the arrangement. Then we add focal flowers, which are generally the big eye-catching beauties that stand out. Next we add secondary flowers, the smaller ones that still make a statement but in a more subtle way than the focal flowers. Finally, we add fillers. These are the little guys like wax flower or aster that fill in the gaps or perhaps pop out and add more dimension to the arrangement.
Here’s the thing — if you buy pre-made arrangements from the grocery store, you are likely going to get flowers from each category. Get two or three bouquets and you have yourself a pile of flowers to mix and match for your own creation. This can be much more cost-effective than getting a bouquet of peonies, a bunch of greens, a dozen roses, and so on. Also, you’ll only wind up with a few of each type rather than enough flowers for a wedding :)
For my centerpiece, I went to Whole Foods to pick up some bouquets. I got three different arrangements with a variety of flowers.
Back at the office, I deconstructed them and separated them into families. With a great mix of greens, focal flowers, secondaries and fillers, I had everything I needed to craft a new (and improved) arrangement. Check out my process in GIF form below!
Want to learn more about flower arranging? Check out this centerpiece tutorial. Itching for even more instruction? We’ve got you covered with our e-class.
We’re pretty sure Blake would high five us for our centerpiece. Don’t you think?
