How to Make a Fragrant Corsage Using Flowers & Herbs

Today I want to share you how to make a corsage that is fragrant using flowers and herbs.

Corsages are a bundle of flowers, usually worn on either on clothing, a wrist or attached to a purse which signify that someone is special or important to an event. It’s basically a boutonniere on steroids. They can be small or large depending on the taste and size of the person it’s made for. If you’re going to wear one, it might as well smell good! Today I want to share you how to make a corsage that is fragrant using flowers and herbs.

Roses, carnations and cymbidium orchids are common corsage flowers but you can use whatever blooms strike your fancy. Just make sure whatever flowers you choose aren’t too delicate and that they’ll hold up for hours without major droop. Many moons ago I worked for a large florist in San Francisco and remember corsages being made with huge cattleya orchids – now those made a statement!

Here are the materials you’ll need:

Scissors.

Wire cutters.

Stem wrap tape (sometimes called floral tape) – it comes in many other colors than green by the way.

Floral design wire – green wire or covered. The green wire comes in paddle form also.

I like to use a gauge anywhere from 20 – 24. Optional: ribbon, jute or cording as a finishing touch.

The steps to take to make this corsage:

* Remove the outer petals from the flowers (especially roses) which are looking bad. I remove the foliage & most of the sepals because they tend to get in the way & add bulk.

* Lay out the flowers & foliages by type & color. This makes it easier when you’re putting the corsage together.

* Cut most of the stems off of the flowers & put the wire through the base of the heads. Wiring your flowers makes them sturdy so the heads won’t fall off & the corsages might come apart. There may be a lot of hugging & dancing going on after all!

* Wrap the floral tape tightly around the base of the flower head & stem. The tape has a bit of a stick to it so it will adhere beautifully. You can cut the wire to a shorter length if you’d like to make it easier to work with.

Here’s a rose with a sprig of rosemary – you can see how the tape is wrapped around. You need to get that wrap, twist & pinch action going on!

* Use the same technique as above when you add the herbs to the flowers – I call these “bundles”.

* Arrange the bundles together how you want them to go. This is also where the wire comes in handy because it makes it easier to position those bundles. It’s good to have the backside of the corsage as flat as possible.

* Leave the stems as is or wrap them in ribbon, jute, cord, etc. For this corsage I used ribbon which was a bit too wide because I was in the process of packing to move & all my other ribbon was boxed & taped. I fishtailed the ends of the ribbon but you could cut them off completely.

Wrist corsages are very in now and almost any corsage could easily be turned into 1 using a corsage bracelet. If the corsage isn’t too big, then you can tie it onto your wrist with ribbon if the bracelet look isn’t your thing.

Whatever way you wear your corsage, just get your floral groove on and have fun making it!

Happy creating,

Nell

joyusgarden.com