Monday, January 24, 2011

Fresh Flowers for Corsages

Making corsage flowers are a good way to build your floral business. Corsages are flowers worn by women on special occasions such as weddings, proms, and other formal occasions. They can be designed with either fresh flowers or silk flora.. Corsages are commonly worn either on the shoulder or on the wrist; although a corsage could be put on an evening bag or purse.

Corsages can be made with either one single flower, a focal flower, such as a rose or an enchantment lily. The success of any design is in using proper and secure mechanics in which to put the corsage together. A single rose corsage may be embellished with green fern, asparagus fern, baby’s breath, statice, and other filler flowers. A silken ribbon is also added for a couple of reasons. First of all, it adds beauty to the design and secondly, it hides the design mechanics in a corsage and pulls all of the elements together to finish the corsage. Be sure and advise the customer of delicate flowers such as gardenias, as they bruise easily and turn brown when touched. Also, you may want to take allergies into consideration. Make sure the recipient has no allergies to flowers. If so, the corsage can be made of silk flowers.

Also, corsages can be made of several smaller flowers. These are multi-flower corsages. Miniature carnations are an inexpensive example of this. Rose of the miniature variety can also be used. A combination of flowers such as small daisies, and carnations, with green leaves, baby’s breath and accent flowers such as monte- casino (a small solid aster) are good choices. Color is very much a concern. Usually as with weddings and proms there are either a color theme or dress color that needs to be matched. Wiring together many small flowers is more time consuming. Each flower and filler flowers are wired together individually and then wired together as one flower. Special efforts have to be made to make sure the corsage is firmly wired together so it does not flop. As with the single flower corsage, a ribbon is also added to the multi-flower corsage to finish off the design.  

Wrist corsages are made the same as a single-flower or a multi-flower corsage. The difference here is that a wrist corsage has a “wristlet” securely attached. There are several commercial wristbands available.

Before packaging any corsage be sure and add at least 1-2 corsage pins. A corsage pin resembles a very long thicker straight pin, usually with a round, pearl top. They are commercially available as florist supplies. A wrist corsage does not need a corsage  pin. Sending a corsage out of your flower shop is a good chance for advertisement for your shop. Be sure and have an attractive corsage box with your shop clearly labeled so all knows from where the flower came. This is a part of “branding your shop”; getting your shop name and logo out there. We all want our flower shop to become a household name. 

There are several good books out on the market about corsage design. You may want to check out this book to aid in your floral education.




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