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HOME SWEET SOUTHERN HOME continued
Mary Beth Voelker is a writer, a mother,
a cook, a gardener, and a crafter. Though
originally from Pittsburgh, she and her
family kept coming back to North Carolina
until God let them stay. She likes to say that
while she has often been bored at work she
has never been bored at home.
HOME SWEET SOUTHERN HOME continued
rejuvenation
hair removal
body wraps
waxing
facials
botox
A New You,
For the New Year.
Cool Sculpting
Gift Certificates
Available.
Forever Young Med Spa • 692-0882
160 Turnberry Way • Pinehurst
HOME SWEET SOUTHERN HOME continued HOME SWEET SOUTHERN HOME continued
Sales/Service/Installations
Direct Vent, Vent Free
& Wood Burning products available.
Showroom Open Mon - Fri 8a - 5p.
We are Family Owned & Operated.
24 Hour Emergency Service
Technicians are on call 24 hours a day.
709 SW Broad Street
Sou Pines • 695-1804
Mon - Fri 8a-5p
~ Family owned
since 1932 ~
Product shown:
Rushmore
Direct Vent
Fireplace Insert
Made in the USA.
installations • propane • gas logs • fire pits • grills • piping • sales • service
(910) 947-1881
4505 Hwy 15/501 • Carthage
Say it With (Silk)Flowers
by Mary Beth Voelker
Spring means flowers. Even more it means
bouquets and corsages. Valentine’s Day,
Mother’s Day, Proms, and Weddings all call for
floral accessories. Fresh flowers from the florist
are lovely, of course, but sometimes you want to
make a lasting memory that’s more than just a
photograph.
You can buy silk flower corsages and
bouquet arrangements already made up, but it’s
easy, affordable, and fun to make your own—
perfectly customized to the wearer’s taste in
colors, blossoms, and shape—with only a few
tools and a little imagination.
For a simple, pin–on corsage you only need
a strong pair of pliers with a wire cutter, silk
flowers (including a bit of greenery), a bit of
ribbon, some floral tape, and maybe a hot glue
gun.
Pick a flower or spray of flowers to be the
main focal point and cut the wire stem about
3 inches below the flower. Add a few smaller
flowers in your contrast color and twist or tape
the wires together. If you want an accent piece
such as a spray of pearls, a cluster of crystals,
or a feather, work that in next. Put your chosen
greenery in back and wrap all the stems with the
floral tape. Hot glue anything that seems to be
loose and add a ribbon bow if you want one.
More elaborate corsages can be made with
larger focal flowers, larger sprays, or a cluster of
focal flowers. Odd numbers usually work best—
one large flower like a chrysanthemum or a full–
blown rose, three medium flowers like rosebuds
or daisies, or a spray of 5 mini–roses or small,
fancy orchids.
These larger pieces will need more fill and
can handle more design elements, though you
don’t want to have too many showy elements
competing for attention. You also want to pay
attention to the weight if the recipient might
be wearing a loose or lightweight garment that
won’t support heavy flowers.
Consider a wrist corsage or an arrangement
intended to be tied to an evening bag to go with
a strapless dress or flowing layers of chiffon. You
can get pre–made wrist elastics with a metal
clip to hold the corsage at any craft store with
a bridal section, sew your own elastic, or wire
the flowers to a metal bracelet that fits securely
enough to stay in place.
If you’re making a bridal bouquet, then
you have even more freedom in your design.
Bouquet holders are available at crafts stores in
several sizes, you can arrange the flowers in a
basket to slip over the bride’s arm, or you can lay
long stems of flowers over the bride’s arm with
greenery and/or ribbons trailing down over her
dress. Consider adding one or more sentimental
objects to the bouquet. My daughter’s contained
pieces of her late grandmother’s jewelry as a
remembrance.
If you forgo the bouquet holder in favor of
bending the stem wires into a handle remember
that floral tape is sticky and uncomfortable to
hold so you’ll want to cover it with ribbon or
fabric.
Flowers for the bridal party’s hair go in and
out of fashion with the trends, but if they’re
wanted hot glue works well to attach them to
combs, clips, and barrettes if you first sand the
plastic or shiny metal to improve the grip. Clips
and claws hold best but keep the arrangement
lightweight. If you make a headband of flowers
for your flower girl you can glue them to a premade
headband or use floral wire to form a
perfectly-sized headband and twist the wires
into it.
Don’t forget the tossing bouquet. It can be a
detachable portion of the bride’s bouquet or a
separate piece kept until needed.
Tips:
When designing remember this rhyme,
“Something dark, something light, something
dull, something bright.” Whether you’re working
with pastels or jewel tones, your design needs
shadows and highlights, background and
contrast.
Have a definite shape in mind. A corsage
can be round, triangular, diamond-shaped,
or S-curved, but it shouldn’t be an amorphous
blob. If the wires the flowers came on are too
stiff to bend into shape or too thin to hold their
assigned shape use floral wire to make them
behave.
If you can’t find crystals, pearls, or other
accent elements in the colors you like in the
bridal/floral section get beads or charms from
the jewelry section and mount them on floral
wire. This is also a good way to add a gift of
jewelry to the arrangement.
If you find the perfect silk flower except that
it has an ugly plastic center you can take the
petals off the wires they came on and re-mount
them on floral wire with a bead or pearl center
instead.
Likewise, if you have a flower you like the
shape or color of but you think the petals are
too sparse you can disassemble it and add extra
layers of petals, stacking multiples of the same
flower together or stacking petals from smaller
flowers on top of larger ones. ☐
No. 133 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.11