If you’ve been following along on my social media, you know that I recently became a florist! I’ve been interested in floral design for a few years and just experimented with grocery store flowers as a hobby. However, last year I decided I need hands-on professional training, so I completed 10 weeks of Floral Design School at the Nashville Flower market last fall.
All of my training and experience has been with real flowers, but I’ve had a few people ask me about faux floral decor and arrangements. I kept coming across DIY floral letter decor on Pinterest and finally decided to dive into the world of faux florals. There is a range of quality when it comes to faux florals, but in this case I started off on the cheap end. For this first project I purchased all of my florals and foam from dollar tree. So, if you looking for something inexpensive, I’d recommend going this route – at least starting off. Continue below to see how I created these easy and inexpensive floral letters!
Supplies
12″ Paper Mache Letters – I ordered mine online from JoAnn, but you can find them on Amazon as well.
Box Cutter
Low- temp hot glue gun
Faux flowers – I used about 15 bunches for 4 12-inch letters
Floral foam – I used about 4 1/2 packs from Dollar Tree
Wire cutter – the floral stems are thick so you will need something sharp and heavy duty to cut them with
The Process
- Cut the top off of the paper mache letters using the box cutter. I found that using a straight edge helped with speed and precision. Once the top is completely removed, take out any of the cardboard filling that’s inside of the letter.
- Using the floral foam, fill in the letters. I had to cut the blocks in half to get them to fit. Make sure you fill in as many gaps as possible. Once you have all of the foam cut and placed in each letter, use your hot glue gun to glue each piece of foam. A little hot glue on the bottom of each piece will do.
Now, we’re ready to prep the flowers.
- Using the wire cutter, cut each bloom off of the stem, leaving about an inch of stem to securely insert into the foam. I also removed the green leaves to use as the base layer. Because the green leaves were not attached to a long stem, I used the hot glue gun to attach them to the foam, just to make sure they wouldn’t fall off.
- Then I filled in the rest with the flowers inserting the stems into the foam. I used hot glue for stems I had cut too short. I wanted to achieve an ombre look, so I started with the darker flowers at the bottom of each letter first. Doing all of the letters at the same time will help achieve a uniform look as opposed to doing each one separately.
That’s it!
This took me about an hour from start to finish – not bad for how beautiful they turned out. DIY faux floral letters are an inexpensive way to add floral decor to any type of event. I’ve also seen them used as decor in a baby nursery. With so many floral options to choose from, you can really get creative with your designs!
If you’re interested, below is a quick video of my process!
Happy crafting!
