Welcome to the Design Lab, I'm Bill Lindeman and I'm a visual merchandiser
at burton + BURTON®, and I would like to show you today how we all have wreaths
in our shops or in our availability, but there are other ways to use them other
than just putting them on a door or on a wall. So today we're going to
create a centerpiece with this beautiful ready-made lavender wreath. This is one
of my favorites here at burton + BURTON®. It's a new arrival. One thing I
want you to do is take it out of the box and we need to breathe some life into
the piece. Usually they're all squished down, flat. This one we're going to use on
a table, so we want to pull all of our pieces up and also make sure that
some of them touch the table so that we have a nice, beautiful, fluffy wreath.
So you can see the more you pull up the pieces, the little
florets up, the more exposure they get and the better the wreath looks.
Ready-made, faux botanicals are a good, easy way to speed things up in your
business. Let's say you have to do a centerpiece
and you don't really have much on hand, so this wreath would come in handy
especially when you pair it up with something else. I'm going to add this
wreath to a birdcage and create a centerpiece. First thing you might want
to do is put a wire around some of the supports on the side of the birdcage.
Just go around these spines with a little bit of wire. This will ensure that
you can get your wreath on there without it falling off. So I'll need three of
these and I would say go in three locations around your birdcage. Just
simply go into the cage, bend it back and come back out again.
And I'm a stickler about finished mechanics so I like to cover my wire
with floral tape. So we have three spots for binding and we're gonna take this
wreath that we've just fluffed and breathed some life into and we're gonna
slide it down over the bird cage, you're gonna find your wire, and go around the
wreath. This way if you do have to move it out of the area where you're using it,
if you have to transport it somewhere, it's not going to fall off. And don't
worry about the end of the wires, just curl them up it looks like something, a
little vine going through here. Now that our wreath is attached, I've
measured out two and a half yards of each one of these three ribbons, and you
want to stack them up. You don't have to be really accurate about stacking
them and then fold them over to find the center of the ribbon. This way you're
going to have equal distribution throughout the entire wreath of your
ribbon. So we've attached a wire already to our wreath right where we
want it to be. So you're gonna just put your ribbon in and take the wire across
that ribbon, the three pieces of ribbon, and twist it in. Now, start to disperse
the ribbon throughout the wreath and all you want to do is pull your ribbons
across, find an intersection where you're gonna let your flowers be the mechanics,
the little wire of the flowers, bring it in, let it be natural, kind of flowing,
it's going to come up over this side then go down through your foliage
towards the table.
So you see right here and then bring it back up again,
find another bonding point with two floral stems, twist them in there, and
always twist twice. Make sure it's not gonna come out. When you get to the end,
finish it off. This ribbon cuts really well, so I am going to dovetail it.
So then we've got one ribbon on, we're gonna take our second ribbon, which is the
important lavender one, and we're gonna run it
similarly, bring it down to the table, come back to the same binding point up
here, and use those same flowers. You may have to untwist them a little, and you're
going to go right back in. You don't want
your ribbon to look scotch-taped, like you took tape and ran it over, so
give it enough air in there, just like you gave air to the flowers in the
wreath, let the ribbon have the same amount of air. You can also go back and
use the same wires that you bound the wreath to the cage with.
Use your third ribbon on this side and just go back to the same areas.
And I like to use several ribbons, gives a little bit of interest, so we have two
solids and a pattern. The taffeta gives a different texture than the two cottons.
And we're back down again in the back here. So you can see, this has created this nice little look.
Cut the end and we'll continue on and do the other side. We're gonna add a bow in
our focal area right here, and I want a little bit of each one of our ribbons,
but not the same amount. So what I'm gonna do is stack the two ribbons, the
taffeta and the printed cotton, and leave a little tail, and I'm gonna twist the
ribbon over my thumb and create a loop just like this. Then I'm gonna twist the
ribbon away from me, like that, and then back to me so the loops are
roughly about the same and I've got a few tails. I'm going to tie this bow off.
When you make a small bow, we're going to cut that off or
set that to the side for a second. We're going to take our other ribbon. Now this one has a yard and a half.
I'm going to dovetail both ends ahead of time,
just like that, and I'm gonna create another bow just like we did our first one:
a loop, a twist away, bring the ribbon back to you. And the reason we twist it is to make sure
that the ribbon has more body. This should give me three loops right there.
So now, I'm going to take the remaining part of our wire, I'm going to slip this
bow in the center of those loops and I'm going to bind all of it together.
Just like that. Pull it together and twist tightly.
Cut that off. We're gonna take another piece of ribbon, go right through our wreath binding area.
Find the center of your bow. You'll see where everything's bound together.
Run the ribbon through here and you're just going to tie this on to the wreath.
Alright, now fluff your bow.
And you are finished with this part of your design. So we're going to take another piece of ribbon, this is a yard, and we're going to fold it in half
and we're going to tie it up here on the top. Just one knot will do, just to get it
there. And we're going to do something similar to the bottom where we're going
to take those same ribbons and we're going to do the same sort of thing. A small bow:
you have between your thumb and your finger, you keep twisting the ribbon in
the center where your thumb and fingers meet.
The same sort of thing, we're going to go back and make another bow with this ribbon.
Go through the loop, tying it tight, twisting.
Now, we do have a matching garland to this wreath, and I took two pieces off
the garland, and I'm going to add them into the bow here. Place that in,
we're going to put one on one side, under the wire that you just inserted, and one
on the other side. Put the longer side where the streamers are and then we're
going to take that little medallion that we're creating and we're going to use
the ribbon that you tied up at the top here and tie to secure this. Just a
simple double knot here. All that will be covered. Now we have a little ribbon accent with some floral
accents in the ribbon and now let's make sure it's all finished. So all of our
ends need to be finished and dovetailed. So we have an accent of floral here and
your wreath centerpiece on the bottom. We're going to take it one more
step here and we're going to add moss and candles. But we're not just going to
stick candles in there, we're going to accent them. So open up your cage,
our sheet moss, we're just going to add some in the bottom here to cover up the metal.
You want to get it as flat as you possibly can because we're going to add our
candles on top of that. If you need to add a little extra where there's a little
bit of metal showing you can. It helps sometimes to squirt your moss with a
misting bottle so it's easier to use, a little more pliable, but as you can see
that creates a nice little carpet down in there. You need two 6 inch candles.
We need some dashes. Now the one trick with this is you're gonna have to do your candles
and then be ready to put the centerpiece with your candles on the table for the
entertaining, because once we turn the candle on, it's on.
So on the dashes, you put your little glue down, then peel the paper off. And then we're going to use
them, we're gonna stack one and we're gonna turn the candle on, stack this one
on top of the other one, and we're going to lay it down on our table
and we're gonna use just a little bit of hot glue here, not a lot,
because you do not want to melt your candle.
Add a little more on the top of that, pull it tightly because we're creating a band right in the center of our candle.
And then we're gonna take our other ribbon, we're gonna do the same thing.
Make sure you have a nice straight edge.
Run it around your candle, come to the end, add a little more glue, and we're going to attach right here. It's almost seamless.
Adjust it a little. We have created a band and a taller candle right there.
It's candle number one, and then we're going to go with an 8 inch candle and we're going to do the same thing.
So on these next ones, we're banding these next candles also,
the 8 inch candle we're putting a band of ribbon around the center of it
as well, with a little hot glue, this way we're bringing the ribbon from the outer
edge of the wreath to the center of the design.
We're staying in the center of the 8 inch candle because it will be below the
height of the first banding, but that first one gives us a 12 inch candle, this
is an 8 inch. All right, so we're on our last piece, our last candle, and we're
gonna band it at the bottom. Again, create a nice straight edge. Keep it straight.
A little glue. One more ribbon, we're almost there.
As I said, you can use this for any impromptu party that you have,
sell it in a shop if you're working in a shop. It's a great way to use your bird
cage. It's a great way to use a wreath rather than just putting it on a door or
on a wall. Everybody can do that. This gives you a little more opportunity to make
more sales. There's your three candles banded. When you do your placement of
your candles, it might be good to keep all your seams to the center, so that it
looks finished all the way around.
And your centerpiece is finished.
The bird cages come in a set of three, three sizes, so this is the largest size. If we've dropped down into the next size,
which is a bit smaller, you can still use another wreath. This is another one of my favorites.
I love the lavender, and that would work as well. So that's another
option for you. If you were doing a big party, you could use one design with the
lavender wreath, or this one with the hydrangea and other flowers here.
So there's a lot of things that you can do. Well, thank you for watching. I hope we've
inspired you to use products in a different way. And if you enjoyed this
video and would like more tutorials like this one, subscribe to our YouTube
channel and visit us at burtonandburton.com. And thank you for watching.