Small, simple and inexpensive floral centerpieces make quite a statement. You can make arrangements out of containers you have around your house and use flowers you can buy at the supermarket or from your own modest garden. Here are some ideas to create simple and stylish floral centerpieces.
Flowers in Footed Glass Bowls
Place flowers of different shades of the same color in a set of three, different sized, clear glass bowls. Put pink roses and hyacinths in one bowl, pink peonies in another and pink ranunculus and peonies in another.
Flutes and Votives
Fill tall flute vases with different colored, spectacular flowers such as peonies and their foliage, and arrange them in the center of the table. At their feet, place votive glasses full of peony blooms and tiny votive candles. Another centerpiece idea is to put a single bloom of a showy flower in a shot glass and place a bunch of them in the center of the table.
Flowers in a Silver Compote
Arrange pale yellow ranunculus with green centers among grape hyacinth in a silver compote dish. Flowers in a silver compote are an ideal centerpiece for brunch.
Poppies in a Bowl
You might need a good-sized frog to arrange a multitude of poppies of any color in a low, bronze bowl. You might want to add some green florist’s wire to the stems to make sure the heavy blossoms don’t fall over.
Go Green
Lovely green flowers include bells of Ireland, scented geranium, hellebores or green zinnias. Place in simple juice glasses, and soften their look with sprays of asparagus fern.
Celebrate Easter
Buy or make a huge papier-mâché chick container, fill its back with daffodils and scatter tiny baskets filled with daffodils around it on the table.
Hyacinths Everywhere
Fill a large, plain glass vase with hyacinths, and surround it with more hyacinths in parfait glasses. To add more interest, tuck purple baby artichokes in between the hyacinth blossoms.
Cool and Warm Colors
Buy some little galvanized metal pails, and fill some with soft lavender-blue sweet peas and others with pale yellow ranunculus. Arrange them in a row down the table interspersed with bright orange-yellow roses in whiskey tumblers.
Onions
Flowering onions, or alliums produce ball-shaped flowerheads that appear in late spring and early summer. The balls can be petite or the size of a child’s head and come in colors of blue, purple, red, white or pink. Place them in simple glass vases with bluestar.
Basket of Roses
A rectangular willow basket of multicolored old shrub roses is always a hit when it comes to a centerpiece. Softer colors of pink, white, lemon yellow and salmon are just the thing.
Recruit Houseplants
Don’t be shy about recruiting your houseplants as centerpieces. Spider plants, bromeliads, begonias and ferns all look lovely when they’re placed down the center of a long table. If they come in different colored pots, find some temporary pots of the same color, slide the potted plant in then take them out when the event is over.
Buds in Teacups
If you have a set of dainty teacups that you don’t use as often as you might, fill them with rosebuds or violets and a bit of moss. It is very sweet if the real flowers resemble the flowers on the teacup itself.
Baby’s Breath
Baby’s breath are those tiny white flowers that are used to lighten up bouquets. Sometimes they are so expensive you’d think that the supermarket wants to get rid of them. Buy lots, and set them in milk glass bottles. For an added touch, decorate them with tiny paper butterflies.
Add Citrus
One interesting touch is to slice citrus fruit such as lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit, and tuck the slices into large clear glass vases, and add flowers. It’s a plus if the flowers echo the colors of the citrus, with orange carnations, chrysanthemums, or yellow daffodils.
Floating Flowers
Make single, lightweight blossoms float on a water filled bowl, but if you want an entire bouquet to float, make a grid of scotch tape over the mouth of the bowl, and simply put the flowers in them, starting in the middle. One rule of thumb is to use an odd number of the same flower.
Use Spools
Different sized spools of colorful thread are a pleasing way to make a flower arrangement. Simply place a single flower with a sturdy stem such as a ranunculus into each spool, and arrange on the table.
Go for the Gold
Turn plain old Mason jars into something special by applying glue to them in artful patches them rolling them in gold leaf. Fill the vases with your favorite flowers.
