Artificial-Faux flowers are now right on trend. They make good sense too. Cut flowers are extraordinarily expensive out of season and whilst without doubt are life enhancing they consume vast resource in their production and transportation around the world. So we are increasingly using them – and in the process acquiring a stock that will be with us for life! – for decorating our homes for the season.
You can get them anywhere!
High end stores like Neptune, Oka have exquisite ranges of single stem, large-headed
flowers in different hues that match the current fashion for dramatic, dark tones. These convincing stems make stunning single stem displays.
As Borrowers we have tried flowers from high street stores including Marks and Spencer The Range The Range and Sainsburys and we think, when mixed with foliage in a display, are largely indistinguishable from the more expensive products.
The flowers and foliage are made of silk or paper with a delicacy of detail and colour gradation that are convincingly authentic. All have had our guests and friends sniffing our fake displays with disappointment!
This is how we do it …
- Use foliage and stems from your garden with your artificial flowers. This will stop the arrangement from looking too perfect and conspicuous. We use willow and olive and silver birch stems that are bare, in bud ready to unfurl, or in leaf and add other foliage like rosemary and Skimmia to infill. For a really natural soft display we use delicate, smaller leaved foliage like Jasmin. Beautiful and convincing. Marks and Spencer have a simple to follow video offering helpful tips to create a structure for your display. Arranging Faux Flowers
- Always fill the vase with water … Not only does this add to the deception it stops the vase tipping.
- Your flowers and foliage will come with stems that are longer than you need . You will need to cut them using florist scissors, or as we do, simply bend them!
- Ring the seasons … try to develop a stock of flowers that you can use as the seasons change. We have white magnolia stems for early spring, peonies, sweet peas and delphinium for summer, hydrangeas and dahilas for autumn and white roses for winter- in fact anything you really like!
- Not necessary but we like to mist our displays with a surround scent. We like Jo Malones room sprays – roses or pear and freesia –
- Your displays will get dusty. Don’t panic use a hair dryer to remove this or simply swish in some some soapy water and dry in a warm place the airing cupboard, aga or similar!
theborrowers 