Is it just us, or has this fall had you pining for more quiet, lady-night soirees? Perhaps a small brunchy friends-giving with your closest gal pals? For this season of gathering and giving, we thought we’d share how to create your own foraged fall posy that girlfriends can bring home as a keepsake from a festive evening.
This time of year offers the unique opportunity to incorporate fresh flowers with dried branches and foliage. As the option of purchasing fresh flowers at the Sunday farmer’s market wanes, bunches of whatever’s been dried from Summer’s bounty start to present.
To be honest, I’ve never chosen to arrange with dried floral before, because for some reason in my mind I had never thought of mixing dried flowers with fresh. Until now!
I focused on the current color story playing out with fall’s dried goodies and built from there. Golden dehydrated artichoke blooms, dark jewel-like seeds atop some tall grass and musty greens and mauves from dried pepper berry, set the stage to add some fresh standard blush roses, apricot lisianthus, buttery carnations and terra-cotta spray roses.
Pulling a few stems of each, I made some little hand-held posies building around a single stem of the standard rose that I made sure to bloom open. (Pro Tip: to bloom your typical grocery store standard rose open: clean the stem of extra leaves, clear off guard petals, fresh angled cut to the stem, put into fresh, clean, lukewarm water with a little flower food. Keep in a light spot.)
The posies are one-sided so that they can be presented on each guest’s plate as a little welcome as they sit down for dinner, like we did for our Thanksgiving tabletop. Posies can be hung or set wherever you so choose once home, and the fresh flowers will dry alongside the already dried items, leaving a charming bundle of reminders of what was a lovely little dinner night.
We also used pieces of leather that we wrote thoughtful sentiments on to wrap the stems of the posies as a unique change to the typical ribbon. (Use scrap ribbon to tie the posies together, then wrap the leather around the bundle!)
Let the colors from your arrangements inspire the rest of your tabletop, and use remaining blooms from the posies to make a larger floral centerpiece for the table.
Cheers to enjoying a bright, intimate fall gathering, and don’t forget to tag your tabletops with #ckstyleaccordingly so we can see how this how-to inspired you to create!
