Large Chocolate Bouquet Arrangement
For this bouquet, you will need:
Wide shallow glass bowl(from the craft section-I got mine at Walmart)
1/2 yard satin material in your choice of color
One large rose, choice of your color(I chose red)
One stem artificial flowers that have several small flowers-I chose white
Wide Valentine ribbon with wire in the edges(I chose white with red hearts)
3 bags chocolate candies to fill bowl
1 small bag red foil heart candies(cheapies are ok-don't choose any with almond middles)
(I chose a red and white theme for my bouquet-you can choose other colors, depending
on if you want more of a dramatic look, or something a little more "fun")
You also need
one leafy vine or swag
Corsage pins
Floral wire(bendable, but not too flimsy--the wires come in packages with different
guages on them. Mine guage is 20)
Floral
foam brick-sized block that will fit snugly in the glass container
Wire cutters
Scissors
or razor knife
Click on the pictures to get a larger view of each
step.
Size your foam block to fit in your glass bowl-mine needed trimmed
just a tiny bit(you can use a kitchen knife to cut the foam-very easy to cut through). Cut a big enough piece of satin
from your material to cover the foam block, pin fabric to foam(as shown here).
Fold your remaining satin material so that the edges are tucked in-place in your
bowl, and fold enough so that your candies will show from the outside of the bowl. Place your satin covered block inside
the bowl, and add your rose flower. Cut the stem of your flower with wire cutters, so that the stem
is about 5" long(there may be some leaves still on the remaining stem-that is fine-you can just leave them attached).
You also may need to use scissors or a razor to make a small hole in the fabric for your stem to poke through to the floral
foam.
Fill your bowl with the 3 bags of candies.
As shown in another bouquet(sorry I forgot to take pics of the white
flowers), take your small flowers apart at the base of the flower-pull any plastic pieces out, so that all you have are the
fabric petals. Keep each flower's petals together, so that your flower is still full, like it was on the stem.
Take 6 of your floral
wires and use a pen to twist the end of the wire around a few times.
Poke your wire through the top of the red foil heart, through
the middle and out the bottom, and slide your heart to the top of the wire until it touches the curled section.
Add your fabric petals below the hearts, making a chocolate middle flower, and
twist your wire again, just beneath the petals, to hold your flower together.
Poke your wires thru
the fabric behind your large rose, spaced apart a little bit. If your material is a little
too think, you may need to use a corsage pin to help make the hole in the fabric, as shown.
Now you can bend your wire stems to form nicely behind the rose.
**Note-I chose to just bend mine-you can cut your wires slightly shorter if you would like-you will probably still need to
bend them slightly so that they don't just look unruly.**
Now take a few leaves from your leafy vine, and add them behind the
large rose. This covers the wires of the white heart flowers, making it appear neater in the back. There is a
small plastic circle that attaches the leaves to the vine-use a floral wire stem, curling the end, adding one set of leaves,
curling under the leaves, and repeating this step a little further down the stem, so that you have some height to hide the
other wires. Attach enough to make the back look neat(I used 6 large leaves-4 for this step, and 2 more, attached with
a corsage pin, at completion of the bouquet).
Make a couple more white flower/red heart middle flowers using
corsage pins this time, sticking the pin through the top of the foil heart, down through the middle, out the
bottom of heart and through white petals, and into foam beneath the rose, to fill in empty space.
Also add a few leaves from the vine to the opposite front section of the foam block, attached with corsage pin. You
will still have empty space behind the front leaves-this is where you will put a big bow.
The ribbon that
works best for this arrangement is wide ribbon with wire edges. Use about 3" of ribbon. Once you tie a large
bow, pin inside the knot with a corsage pin, attaching it to the foam block. Fold your remaining ribbon in toward
the knot and tuck through the knot. Do this with both sides of ribbon. Then use your hands to form the wires in
the ribbon, so that they are full. Make the remaining ribbon tails wavy, and add a few pins to hold them in
place to the foam block. I made them full and formed them around my rose.
This is where I added one more set of leaves to the back of the arrangement.
