The holiday season is officially here. While you're probably busy making your lists and checking them twice, it's important to remember to partake in the little, dopamine-inducing things—including creating festive floral arrangements to make your house feel like a home.
It's not always easy finding flowers in their prime in the middle of winter, so we’ve tested out a few viral hacks that supposedly get you the prettiest bouquet—all with flowers you can get from your local grocery store. From opening flower buds to making your arrangement look as full as possible, here are the top tips we can say are tried (and true).
"Netting" Your Vase
One of the most overlooked parts about buying flowers: finding a vase to put them in. If you've ever had a gorgeous but too-wide vase or bowl that doesn't hold up your bouquet (or you have limp or thin-stemmed flowers), creating a grid over the lid of the bowl, vase, or jar of your choice solves this problem.
Take a piece of netting that completely covers the opening of your vase, secure it using tape, mounting putty, or by clipping it into a Mason jar, and set your flowers up through the holes in the netting. This offers support to even the thinnest-stemmed flowers and keeps them from slumping over when they hit the water.
If you don’t have netting on hand, substitute in tape or string—place several pieces of tape over the vase’s opening to create a grid of any size. This also helps you customize the size of the holes so you can adjust your arrangement's look to your liking.
This hack is especially handy when arranging flowers in bowls, since even large bouquets tend to lean over the edges. Just make sure you’re still trimming the stems of your arrangement before netting them; when the stems are too tall, it can cause the flowers to awkwardly lean instead of being being fully supported.
Displaying Carnations
Carnations are one of the most popular holiday flowers, admired for their fluffy petals and affordable price. If you don’t already associate carnations with the winter holidays, you should—you can use them to brighten up any arrangement and find them in stores year-round.
Getting these small flowers looking worthy of a table centerpiece involves some additional prep work. By peeling back the green bulb at the base of each carnation’s flower, each bloom will appear more fluffed up and fuller, making any arrangement look more professional. To make this flower look more rose-like, pluck out a few center petals to display the different colors in the middle of the flower.
You can also gently press down on the center of the flower while rolling or pinching its base. This helps your carnations that haven’t bloomed yet open up. However, note that opening your carnations up like this will cause them to wilt a little earlier than if you let them bloom naturally.—you’re essentially speeding up the process.
Pennies, Bleach, or Both?
Nobody wants to run into a flower emergency right before a holiday party. If you put in time and effort arranging your blooms to the best of your ability, you should also make sure they’re going to last a long time. To do so, you can either add a few drops of bleach or a penny into the water of your vase. (Keep in mind you'll need to hunt down a penny from 1981 or earlier, as they have the most copper.)
The chemicals in the bleach and copper in the penny work to kill off any bacteria and fungi, making your flowers stay fresh for longer. Plus, you won’t have to swap out the water every day to keep them looking healthy.
As for which works better: They're both equally effective. Dropping a penny or two into your vase is a bit easier if you’re planning on changing out the water every once in a while; and you can reuse them.
Doubling Your Vase
To create the most eye-catching floral centerpiece, try layering your vases inside of one another. The middle vase holds the flowers, while the space between the outer and inner vase can be filled with festive accessories.
Decorators on social media have showcased using everything from mini ornaments to holiday candies (think peppermints or long candy canes) to fill the outer layer of their vases. This creates a fun holiday centerpiece that doesn’t come at the expense of your flowers. You also won’t have to buy any filler for the entire outer vase, since the inside uses most of the space.
Make sure your accessories don't overtake your flowers, though. Choose colors that match or complement your bouquet, use taller arrangements, and stand your flowers upright in the vase to help to draw more attention to the main focus: your bouquet.