I’m not a professional florist, but you probably aren’t, either. We can still make beautiful flower arrangements for Shavuot, and I’ll break it all down for you.

First, I start with the vase. To keep it affordable, use these great vases from the Dollar Tree for just $1.25. They are a great size and shape to make a full and generous arrangement but small enough to be manageable for someone just trying out floral arranging.

Once you have the vase, you need to get the flowers. Trader Joe’s is always my go-to for a beautiful selection of flowers at great prices. However, it can be overwhelming to sort through all of the floral options to determine which to buy to create your own arrangement. I like to pick a color or two for my arrangements and work from there. A bunch of different flowers in shades of pink look beautiful together, or yellow flowers and green accents.

After deciding my color scheme, I start choosing specific flowers, beginning with the largest flowers, then medium-size flowers, and finally the smaller, filler flowers. Roses, for example, are a great large flower; spray roses, gerbers, or mums are perfect medium flowers; and lastly you will find a bucket called “filler,” which has lots of different beautiful filler flowers in different colors and textures. There is also a greens bucket you can use for filler.

After choosing my color scheme and specific flowers, it’s time to get to the real fun of turning them into a beautiful arrangement! Just like when choosing the flowers in the store, I start from largest to smallest when creating the arrangement. I begin with the largest flowers and trim them to size. I hold the flower next to the glass vase to see where it comes up to and decide how high I want my arrangement to be, and then I trim the excess. That one flower can then be used as a guide to cut the rest of that type of flower. Remove the leaves from the rose stems, then place them in the vase in a crisscross manner to keep them stable. It will be a little wobbly with just the roses, but once you continue filling the vase, the piece will stabilize.

After the large flowers are placed in the vase, move on to the medium-size flowers, again measuring and trimming as needed. It’s always better to cut too little than too much, because of course you can remove more if the flower looks too tall once placed in the vase. Make sure you are dispersing the flowers evenly throughout the vase so there are no clumps of one type of flower.

Finally, finish the piece off with the little details that make a big difference – the filler! The filler gets trimmed and placed in the vase in any spots that are empty to fill in the entire piece completely. It looks nice when some filler hangs over the edges as well. Make sure to rotate the vase to check that the arrangement looks filled in and complete from every side!

There you have it! A beautiful arrangement that will cost way less than going to the florist! With the smaller vases, it is nice to do two or three for a table for a fuller look. You may not be a florist, but with a few simple steps you absolutely can make a beautiful flower arrangement and centerpiece for your table!

– Deena