Silk hydrangea and orchid bouquet made easy

For my next project,  I love hydrangea and orchids but wanted to use cymbidium instead of the wild orchids.  I also wanted this one to be more colorful.  So off to my favorite craft stores where I find beautiful sangria colored hydrangea and gorgeous green orchids!

Here is a list of materials you will need:
1 bouquet holder
1 stem of orchids (I used all 7 of the orchids on the stem)
3 stems of hydrangea
Acrylic accents
Sangria colored ribbon
Wire for the stems
Hot glue gun
Glue sticks

I know the orchids in the pic are fuchsia not green - I changed my mind when I started to put it together and saw the green looked better.

This time I took pictures as I assembled the bouquet to hopefully make it easy to see how it is put together.

Step 1:
Cut the orchids from the stems.  For added strength and flexibility, I wired the stems which you can see in the picture.

 

Step 2:

Cut the hydrangea into sections to make them easy to handle.  I did not wire the hydrangea stems as I didn't want them to bunch up.

Step 3:

Grasp the bouquet holder.  You will insert the first section of hydrangea into the Styrofoam in the middle of the bouquet holder.  A quick tip here - use a small pointed item to poke a hole into the Styrofoam.  I had a floral stem that was perfect for the size hole I needed.  You will then squirt hot glue into the hole and insert the hydrangea section holding it for 10 to 15 seconds to make sure it stays positioned correctly.

 

Repeat until you have the entire bouquet holder filled with hydrangea.  Don't forget the sides and the smaller holes in the back of the holder.  Your bouquet should look like this:

 

Step 4:
Now we're ready to start inserting the orchids. Grasp the orchid by the top and then I loosely placed them in the hydrangea (not poking into the Styrofoam just yet) until it was balanced and pleasing to the eye.

 

Step 5:

Once you have decided on where to place the orchids, poke a hole in the Styrofoam (gently move the hydrangea aside to do this), fill with hot glue and then insert the orchid. Repeat until you have all the orchids in place.

 



Step 6:
Now it's time to decide what accents (if any) you want to use.  I tried out three - some blingy charms, pearl sprays and then the green acrylic leaves which I ended up liking the most.  To add them, again poke a small hole in the Styrofoam where you want to place them, fill with hot glue and insert.  Hold in place for 10 to 15 seconds so they don't shift.

Here are pics of all three:

 

And there you have it!  All that's left to do is wrap the bouquet handle with ribbon.  I will cover that in our next DIY project!