Flowers on Friday: Carnation Topiary

This weeks flowers on Friday is a bit different. Last week I found myself at the grocery store, doing one of our Big Monthly Shops, when carnations were on sale for $2.50 a bunch. Normally, like most women, I tend to cringe at the little fella's, but I remembered little carnation topiary's I had made last year for a valentines dinner and thought I would share with you Carnation Topiary's.

Because this project was a spur of the moment thing I didn't have any floral tape on hand, which would have held the stems together tighter, making the overall effect more tree like.

To start  you'll need some carnations (duh), some floral foam, an elastic band, some ribbon, and a container to hold your topiary.

First pull the extra leaves off of the stems.

Then "Fluff" your carnations, you know, just spread the petals a little bit with your fingers.
To make the top of the topiary I start with one stem, then pull the flowers stems across, so that you end up with a round shape on top. (refer to picture below)

Wrap an elastic (I just use the one that comes wrapped around the stems) around the base of the flowers to hold them in place, fluff flowers again.

After I've made the top of the topiary I trim all the stems so that they are the same length, then stick them into the floral foam.

And last, I wrap a piece of ribbon around the top of the stems to hide the elastic.

Voila, Carnation Topiary, it's kinda silly but looks neat. Like I mentioned earlier I would have liked to have some floral tape so that  I could get the stems closer together.
The last picture is a picture of the carnation topiary I made last year for valentines day. (I took the picture on our leather chair.)

To see where Flowers on Friday started follow the link, Lee loves to read the comments, although it all goes to his head, haha Just Kidding, Kind of :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend, ours will be filled with lots of excitement, big changes happening around The Manor, can't wait to share them with you. Hopefully Monday!!!