DIY Eucalyptus Centerpiece
I wanted to start the year off with a fun DIY tutorial on how to make a centerpiece.
If you are not familiar with me or my company, let me introduce myself. I am Carrie Bishop and I own River Rose Flower Company. I specialize in teaching flower workshops. My mission is to make flower arranging fun, affordable, and accessible for everyone. In order to make that happen I will almost always include one or all of the following: garden scraps, grocery store flowers, and recycled materials for the container/vase.
This eucalyptus centerpiece is a crowd-pleasing arrangement as it will suit ANY color palette. It's easy on the budget ($8), beautiful enough to be used as a wedding centerpiece (especially for a round table, if you want to learn how to centerpiece for a long table, stay tuned). Is it also trendy in its whimsy bohemian style.
Why eucalyptus? It's modern, it's elegant and it's easy to work with!
Now that I have sold you on wanting to make this GORGEOUS eucalyptus centerpiece, lets get started...
DIY Eucalyptus Centerpiece Instructions
You will need:
1 clear appetizer plate (I bought an 8 pack at a local $ store)
1 bouquet of blue eucalyptus greens
1 bouquet of silver dollar eucalyptus greens
(You might be able to buy a mixed bouquet of greens and that will work if has at least 3 stems of each kind of eucalyptus)
A pair of cutting shears/scissors
1/3 piece of floral brick (do not use the kind for fake flowers)
Optional: tapered candle, decorative card (table number/name)
Start off by cutting off the edges of the four corners. This will give you more surface area to put your greens in. Then you want to start off with the first layer.
Pro Tip: Your goal is to angle your greens/flowers down. Think about covering your mechanics (the plate).
It helps that the plate is clear, so the pressure is off. Use the silver dollar greens first because they have a fan like coverage. Start at the "North" point and then go clock wise around. Next, fill in the points in-between, SE and NW, etc.
Do another layer exactly how you did the first. Make sure that you are angling the stems.
Pro Tip: Make sure that you are angling the stems down.
You may be wondering "how long of a stem do I cut?" or "how do I use the bottom half of the stem?". And this photo will answer both of those questions. That is how long you want to cut each piece, roughly 3-4 inches. You can use the bottom pieces by cleaning them up by trimming off the excess stems.
On the third layer you will need to introduce the blue eucalyptus.
Pro Tip: In order to efficiently use as much of the bouquet as possible, you will have to know how to cut short pieces vs. long pieces.
Having the two different lengths will help give your centerpiece depth and style.
Make sure that you alternate short pieces with long pieces of the blue eucalyptus.
Pro Tip: You will find places where the floral foam is showing. Use short pieces to cover up those spots. You will have more of the short pieces than you will have of the long pieces.
If you look at the "Third Layer" photo, you will see that I alternate going clockwise in the following pattern, short piece, long piece, short piece, long piece, etc. And then feel free to fill in some of the spots with the short pieces, as mentioned before in the TIP.
Alrighty, you are almost there! You should have a few single leaf stems left and those are perfect for the top or Final Layer of the centerpiece.
Pro Tip: Cut off any excess stems on the single leaf stems. This will produce a nice finished look on the top and final layer.
I usually do not angle these single leaf stems, because I want them to have a height that creates a rounded top. By putting the single leaf "finishing stems" in at a 90 degree angle on top portion of the floral foam, should do the trick.
And there you have it. A fun, whimsy, bohemian, eucalyptus centerpiece. It should last up to two weeks if you water it, every other day.
Here is the same centerpiece with a tapered candle in the center of the floral foam. The candle is a perfect touch for a small dinner party or a centerpiece for a round table at a wedding.
Here is a version with a small notecard on a BBQ skewer cut in half. You can do the same thing for a wedding centerpiece by putting the table number/name on a notecard.
Hope you had fun learning how to make this fun, easy and very versatile eucalyptus centerpiece! -Carrie
If you stumbled on my blog - please find me on Facebook too! @RiverRoseFlowerCo where I"ll be showcasing my floral designs, filming Facebook Lives on how to arrange flowers and sharing my flower knowledge!
