Prudent Tip: Making Cheapo Flowers Look Fancy

Here's a few tried-and-true tricks to make gorgeous last minute holiday centerpieces out of cheap bouquets.  These bouquets were less then $5 each!

Rule: Disassemble & Reassemble
Trick #1: Scotch Tape
Trick #2: Silver Spray Paint

Get the details after the jump...
Grab your drugstore bouquet and a vase.  Before you start, fill the vase with water and that flower-preserving powder stuff if it came with your bouquet:

Next, whip out the scotch tape and tape a grid on top of your vase:

You want to also put a ring of tape around the edge to hold your grid in place:

Now the key to making a cheapo bouquet look gorgeous is to take it apart and reassemble it.  Remove all the leaves from the stems.  It'll look cleaner and last longer - leaves under the water make your water dirty and grimy looking.  Cut them shorter so the flowers are sitting right outside the vase, without  a lot of empty stem above the rim.  Now start reassembling it.  Start with your colorful stuff evenly distributed in your grid:

You can lose some of the filler since you've created this scotch tape grid to hold your flowers up.  One thing I like to do, if the bouquet has a bunch of baby's breath: Get rid of it all... then take the baby's breath by itself and put it in another vase, it looks so nice on its own.

So now start adding your flowers and greens into your grid until it looks nice!  A dome shape is usually a good one to go for.  Wrap a piece of filler around the rim of the vase to cover your tape (or artfully arrange your flowers to cover it) and there you go:

Doesn't that look like it cost more than five bucks??

Ok, next tip for holiday sparkliness.  Whip out some silver spray paint and coat a few branches with it, then follow the process above:

See, now that's some prudent holiday decor!  And what an inexpensive version of a hostess gift!