Creating the Same Look Using Fresh or Faux Flowers

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that I’m all about using fresh flowers in my home decor. Fresh flowers transform my fairly, neutral everyday decor into decor that pops with color. Plus, flowers provide the perfect seasonal touch. For example, we have amaryllis in winter, peonies in spring, wildflowers in summer and dahlias in late summer, early fall. Yet, sometimes the perfect fresh flowers are unavailable. Plus, you have to replace fresh flowers often. Enter faux flowers. To be honest, I don’t use faux flowers very often, but this fall I was getting frustrated with the short lifespan of dahlias so I was on a mission to recreate my fresh fall flowers using faux flowers. I’m pretty happy with the results and will show you how you can recreate both in your own homes. In addition, I’ll outline some of the tips for picking and using fresh and faux flowers in your decor.

September decor is all about transitioning from summer into fall. This year, I wanted my September decor to be light, bright and whimsical. To keep a nod to summer, I’m using bright-white accessories like all the white pillows, the paper mache squirrel and ceramic acorn. Then to introduce fall, I’m mixing metals, using natural elements like acorns and pine cones and adding pops of color with seasonal flowers. The fresh flowers I found formed my color palette—white, orange and light peach. The orange is inspired by the orange dahlia; however, sadly it dies after only a few days. That’s why I’m providing you with the how-to for both a fresh bouquet and a faux bouquet.

The Original Fresh Flower Bouquet

As I stated earlier, I love dahlias. Dahlias provide such a range of vibrant colors which simply speak to my color-loving heart. You can see how I use them year after year in my article 10 Easy Fall Floral Arrangement Ideas. They are usually available in August and early September, so they are a perfect transitional flower when moving from summer into fall decor. If only they would last longer than four to five days. Not long enough when you pay upwards of $8-10 for only five stems. Yet, if you are hosting a party, these are the perfect flower to wow your guests. I just suggest buying them on the day of your event because the color starts to fade as soon as you get them.

For the vase, I used a white pot to stick to my light-bright color palette. I also like using opaque containers because they hide the stems.

Tips for Picking Fresh Flowers

• Feature at least one seasonal flower.
• Use a few flowers you know have a longer shelf life. For example, here I knew that even though the dahlias would die within a few days, the eucalyptus, white lisianthus, and white football mums would easily last 1 1/2 weeks long, if not longer.
• If mixing flowers, vary the size of the blooms. Think about featuring a large, medium and small flower.
• Check for freshness.
  • For larger blooms, like hydrangea and mums, make sure the blooms feel firm to touch.
  • Don’t be afraid to buy closed blooms. This is especially true when buying tulips or peonies. They will open once you bring them home and last longer than the ones that are already open in the store.
  • Another way to check freshness, shake your blooms upside down and see if any petals fall off. If a lot do, they are not fresh.
  • Make sure the bottoms of the stems aren’t brown or slimy.

Flowers Used Here

• Orange Dahlias (3-4 stems) Note: be sure to add a few of the small bud stems to each arrangement as well
• White Football Mums (2-3 stems)
• Light Peach Spray Roses (3-4 stems)
• White Lisianthus (3-5 stems)
• Seeded Eucalyptus (you’ll need a few branches)
• Pine cones, floral wire and hot glue (3)

When creating your arrangement, start by creating a base layer using your seeded eucalyptus. Then layer in the larger white football mums and white lisianthus, followed by the orange dahlias. I cut the stems so that the flowers lay on the rim of the vase. Then add in your light peach spray roses to fill in holes. Lastly, glue your pine cones to your floral wire and add to your arrangement. Be sure to remove any leaves that will be below the water line and cut all your flower stems at a 45-degree angle. This allows your stems to get the right amount of water.

The Look-A-Like Faux Bouquet

Finding faux flowers that create the same feel as the fresh flowers proved challenging. The faux just often look, well… faux! When trying to find the orange dahlia, they simply didn’t have it. However, craft stores did have a variety of orange mums, but they were too bright, too brown or too large. I felt like Goldie Locks and the Three Bears, it was very difficult to find something that was “just right.” And then when I found something that I thought might work, they were pricey! Like, break-the-bank pricey. Even with 40% off at Michaels, Joanns and Hobby Lobby, in order to create something that still wasn’t something I loved, it would have cost me around $40 for one bouquet. Yikes.

I was feeling discouraged and was just going to create a faux fall bouquet that didn’t resemble my fresh one, but then I went to Pottery Barn’s website. There I found a set of four dahlias that I thought would create the same “feel” as my fresh flowers. Mainly because they came in my color palette—orange, dark peach, light peach and cream. And they were affordable, as far as faux flower prices go. Before the sale price, they were $24 for 4 stems, so $6 per stem. Believe it or not, that is about equal to the sale price of flower stems I was finding at the craft stores. The good news, I got them 20% off—so even better!

Tips for Picking Faux Flowers

• Make sure you LOVE them. Faux flowers are an investment so don’t settle for something you don’t love. You want to make sure you’ll want to use them over and over again.
• Pick flowers and colors that actually exist in nature.
• Pick seasonal flowers. For example, using peonies in fall is a dead giveaway that your flowers probably aren’t real.
• Look for “paper” flowers when wanting to add small, whimsical blooms whose greenery looks a little more real than the silk varieties. You can see an example of this in my post Set the Tone Tips: Table Decor.
• Mix in dried flowers.
• Use fresh or dried greenery instead of faux. To me, faux greenery is really the element that gives away the fact that you’re using fake flowers so I always use fresh or dried greenery.
• Add other natural, seasonal elements. For example, here I added real pine cones.

Flowers Used Here

• 4 faux dahlia stems in a variety of colors: I used the Faux Dahlia Bundle from Pottery Barn (I’m not an affiliate, so I make no money when you click on my link)
• Fresh or Dried eucalyptus (a few stems, buy fresh at your local florist or grocery store and it will naturally dry out for use for the season)
• Pine cones, floral wire and hot glue (3)

Start by creating a base layer with your eucalyptus. If using fresh eucalyptus, you can use water in your vase if you want it to stay fresh longer, but you don’t have to. The fresh eucalyptus will naturally dry out and look great for the season. Then add your four dahlia stems. The stems were too long for my small pot, so I just bent the stems to create the right height. I didn’t cut the stems because I want to be able to use them in a taller vase later. Lastly, hot glue your pine cones to your floral wire and add them into your bouquet. Easy peasy!

A Matching Fresh & Faux Large Bouquet

I love being able to use similar flowers throughout my home so I often create the same look, but at different sizes. So using the same elements as my smaller bouquet, I created larger bouquets (a fresh and a faux) that I feature in my kitchen. The large fresh bouquet (featured above) uses the same exact flowers as the small bouquet. The main difference for the large faux bouquet (featured below) is I mixed only two faux dahlias with a lot of faux white mums. Faux white mums are available at all craft stores and are very affordable. And to show you how you can have fun with it, I provide a second faux option where you could use a small faux orange mum as well.

The large faux bouquet (option 1) features two faux dahlias plus a handful of fake white mums found at Michaels, Joann Fabrics and Hobby Lobby.

Above is the large faux bouquet (option 2). I replaced the pink dahlia with the cream dahlia and then used four of the small orange mums I used in the small fall wreaths I made. I found the small mums at Michaels.

The flowers were originally made to match the small fall wreaths featured above. I actually created the small wreaths to be used in another way, so be sure to check out my DIY Fall Wreath post.

So what do you prefer, fresh or faux flowers? Please let me know in the comments below. It will help me to know if I should feature more DIY faux flower arrangements.