There’s nothing better than summer days filled with sun, surf and sand. And, it’s easy to turn your home into a beach resort with these “sun-sational” arrangements created with just a few fresh-cut flowers.
Using beach-like elements, these beachy bouquets bring the seaside inside or to your own back yard.
Sensational sandbox
Materials:10-inch x 13-inch x 2.5-inch deep shadow box picture frame
9 short water tubes
3 red, 3 orange and 3 yellow gerbera daisies
Play sand, enough to fill the shadow box
Floral clippers and preservative
Directions:
Take the shadow box apart, but leave the back on.
Fill the shadow box full of sand.
Fill the water tubes with water that has been treated with floral preservative.
Cut the flowers to fit inside the water tubes. Insert the water tubes deeply into the sand. Space them evenly and alternate the colors.
Note: The shadow box gets heavy with sand, so when carrying it to its resting spot, support the back of it with your hands.
Ikebana
Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging. While you are not making a true Ikebana display, the principles of the technique are at work — that is, simple styling with emphasis on each individual flower.Materials:
Long tray, approximately 20-inches long by 6- to 8-inches wide
3 floral pin frogs about 1-inch in diameter
Floral clay
Two 4-inch diameter ceramic saucers
1 large conch shell
3 plastic or metal napkin rings
1 handful of small pebbles/rocks
3 stems white iris
3 stems white freesia
1 stem Casablanca lily or white Asiatic lily
1 stem umbrella grass
4 to 5 stems baregrass
Floral clippers and preservative
Directions:
Place floral clay on the bottom of each pin frog. Place the pin frogs in the center of the two saucers and in the mouth of the conch shell.
Place the napkin holders over the frogs. Now use the small pebbles just inside the napkin rings to help hide the frogs.
Set the two saucers into the tray, one in the center and one on either side of the center saucer. Place the conch shell at the other end of the tray.
Carefully pour water that has been treated with floral preservative into each saucer and the conch shell.
Cut three stems of freesia about 6-inches in length. Insert the freesia into the center saucer. The freesia blooms should face outward.
Cut one stem of iris about 10 inches in length, cut another iris stem about 7 inches in length and cut the third stem to about 4 or 5 inches in length.
Insert the stems into the other saucer. Insert the baregrass around the iris.
Finally cut the bloom of the lily and the umbrella grass to about 2 or 3 inches in length and insert into the conch shell.
Sand and stems
Materials:3 over-sized clear glass votive cups
3 stems blue iris
3 water tubes
Play sand, enough to fill the votives
Floral clippers and preservative
Directions:
Fill the votives with sand.
Fill the water tubes with water that has been treated with floral preservative.
Cut the iris short and insert one stem into each of the water tubes.
Insert one iris with water tube into each sand-filled votive.
Set the votives on shelves or line them up on a table or bookshelf.
Jill Slater is spokesperson for www.flowerpossibilities.com, a Web site that offers ideas on flower arranging. She is also a frequent guest on “Henry’s Garden” on KRON-TV Channel 4.
