American Style Flower Arranging (part 2)

The materials used to make the flower arrangement like this are snapdragon, gerberas, red and yellow celosia or cock comb and the foliage is anthurium leaf, red and green cordyline, futoy, alokasia or tombak Irian, justicia or rugball and ruscus.

And here’s the step by step tutorial:

1. Prepare a round ceramic vase of medium height (15 - 20 cm). Fill in with wet floral foam, cut the top but leave 1 - 3 cm from the mouth of the vase and then trim the edges.
2. Take a stem of snapdragon flower, measure the length approximately 3x the height of the vase, cut it. Then put it a bit in the middle, not in upright position but slightly skewed to the left. Do the same for the other two snapdragon but with different length, shorter than the first one.

Take 3 anthurium leaves, put it in sequence by using terracing techniques, give among them a bit distance so that not to stick together.

3. Take 4 pieces of red cordyline, fold three of them each in different length. First put the longest leaf approximately 135° toward the right opposite the direction of the anthurium leaves, after that do the same for the rest of the leaves, all lead toward the middle.
4. Take 3 pieces of green cordyline, now place them across from the red ones. Now the flowers arrangement has 3 dimensional look.

Take a gerbera, cut very short then attach at the front. From this one, do the same with the other four gerberas by using basing technique but in different height. 

Make all the gerberas facing upwards, so they look like flower protected by the other higher flowers.

1. Take some futoy stems (20-25 cm long), stick together by using wire, then place it in the middle of the arrangement. (You might need 2-3 skewers to do this)

Take 2 alokasia leaves then put them opposite direction to the snapdragon.

2. Take some red celosia, cut them short and place them at the front on the left side of the gerbera while on the right side filled with 2 snapdragon (cut shorter than the other snapdragon placed opposite)

Take 2 stems of yellow celosia, placed below the alokasia.

3. Last one, put justicia or rugball among yellow celosia, green cordyline, and red celosia. Then fill the empty place with foliage, cut it short to cover the floral foam. Make sure that there isn’t any floral foam seen, ok?
4. Done.

The flower arrangement seen from the front and side view.

Up close look (image above), the red and yellow celosia look fantastic while the justicia or rugball looks so cute, doesn’t it? It is alike yellow sisal.

Note:

Images taken at the workshop by Andy Djati Utomo S.Sn, AIFD, CFD, May 16th 2012, in Bandung.