How to make a hand tied bouquet

Do you admire beautifully tied flower bouquets? How professional and crisp they always look? If so, here are some simple steps you can follow to learn to tie like the pros.

Step 1: Cleaning Your Flowers
Make sure your flowers are clean and in nice condition. To do so, take the leaves and thorns off and then put them in water for about an hour to ensure they are well hydrated.

Step 2: Arranging Your Flowers
To get started you should take some greens—three or four—stems and lay them across your hand. Then take four flowers and lay them across your hand right next to each other on top of the greens. After you have the flowers laid out in your hand, wrap your hand around the flowers and make one little twist with your wrist so that the green parts slightly move into the middle. After you have done that then start the process again, laying more flowers into your budding bouquet. Each time you make the twist the greens and the flowers are going to move more into the middle of the bunch, making a nice round circle.

Step 3: Tying Your Bouquet With Wire
When the bouquet seems round and full enough, take some narrow green wire to tie up the bunch. Cut the wire with wire cutters. If you are using professional clippers there should be a wire cutter built into the clippers (the wire cutter is usually found at the bottom of the clippers). With your cut wire in hand, wrap your bouquet around twice in one direction and then twist it around tightly, then wrap your bouquet twice in the other direction and cut off any excess wire.

Step 4: Cutting Your Bouquet
Hold your now tied flower arrangement tightly by squeezing it. You want to give the stems as sharp and tight a cut as possible. You can cut them straight across or you can cut them at an angle. If they are meant to be carried, say in a wedding, you should cut them on an angle.

Step 5: Picking and Measuring Your Ribbon
After you have secured your bouquet with the wire and your flowers have been cut, you’ll want to tie it with some pretty ribbon to cover the wire. When choosing a ribbon a neutral color works great. The best way to measure the correct length for the ribbon is to drape the ribbon around your neck and let the ribbon fall to the floor, then cut the ribbon at the floor. It will seem like much more ribbon than you need, but you’ll use it.

Step 6: Tying Your Bouquet With Ribbon
Now you are ready to tie your flowers—place the ribbon underneath your bouquet and bring it all the way to the top of the stems near the flowers. Then wrap it around really tight once, keeping your thumb on it so it stays tight and then wrap it again really tight, again using your thumb to hold it in place. You’ve basically just twisted both sides around each other.

Now you are going to add a twist—literally a twist—and begin to bring the ribbon down the stem a bit. Wrap the ribbon again and before taking it down toward the bottom of the stem make one little twist so you are creating a small knot. Then continue to wrap the ribbon around again and make a second twist—another knot—right near the same spot where your first knot is. You’ll see your twists are starting to line up nicely. You are going to keep doing this until you run out of ribbon.

For your last twist/knot you should bring the ribbon up slightly in the back so that the last knot arrives in the middle of the existing ties/knots, rather than at the end or bottom where it would likely be. Once you’ve done that you can simply tie a bow.