So now I am going to show you how to arrange flowers from a bodega. We talked about selecting flowers from the bodega and trying to get as fresh as possible. What I have done here is I have selected flowers that are all kind of in the same color family. That is a really nice trick for making something look a little bit nicer. If the flowers are not as high quality, if you keep something in a palette that is very similar, it can look a little more sophisticated.
With any flower arrangement, especially bodega flowers, you want to make sure that you clean the stems all the way down, anything that is going to sit in the water line. I have chosen a vessel here that is pretty casual, and I think that really pairs well with the bodega flower look. In terms of cleaning the flowers, I discovered once I had pulled out those packages of bodega flowers that I actually had some snap dragons that are rotting a little bit, they are not the highest quality. I want to show you how to clean those up, and no one will ever know the difference.
All you have to do is pull off the rotten blooms, and you will discover that when you get to the top you actually have a pretty decent snap dragon. As long as the stem is not slimy or coming apart in your hand and it is just the blooms that are a problem, just toss those. Then you have a flower that is nice and cleaned up. We kind of classed it up. Just casually gather bodega flowers, cleaning them as you go. Maybe make this arrangement in your hand, and at the very end we can cut and place it in the vase.
Again, if you are using flowers like carnations and mums and snap dragons, some of the flowers that are considered less expensive, maybe a little bit lower quality, I would go for a wildflower or a casually gathered look. You can start placing them in your hand, turning the bouquet around a little bit. If you have a flower that is less expensive from a bodega and it is like a carnation and you have it sticking up with an airy look, it does not look as sophisticated, but this is that you can make the flowers look actually like they are a little more special.
As you can see, I have been twirling this bouquet around in my hand and adding flower after flower. Mostly, the flowers are all in the same plane, or what we call a pavet arrangement. With the colors being similar and the flowers all in the same plane, you can start to see that it is looking a little more sophisticated than it might otherwise, even though we have kind of casual vase and we have casual flowers.
I am going to try and measure the height of the vase, and I want these to sit pretty low and tight in the vase. Again, I feel like that makes them look a little more sophisticated. I might trim the bottoms a bit. I can always add a few more blooms at the end. You can adjust as you see fit. Twirl it around a little bit. I really think that everything low and tight in the vase really helps the look, and just keep adding at will. These bodega flowers were not very expensive, so you can use a lot of blooms. Clean them up, and continue to clean them up and add things as you go. Get a nice shape going. Pull them up if you need to. That is how you arrange flowers from the bodega.