10 Tricks To Make Flowers Look Better

1. Cut the stems of your flowers at a 45-degree angle one inch from the bottom. This instantly increases the surface area for water intake, so your they will be well hydrated.

2. Use a teacup as a vase. Don’t trash flowers with shorter stems. Instead display them in a teacup. Keep the stems together using a clear hair tie, like Goody Ouchless Mini Elastics, so they don’t separate in the teacup, which also makes it easier to change the water.

3. Open closed buds quickly by putting them in warm water first, then cold water. After cutting flower stems as described in No. 1, put flowers in a glass filled with warm water. After a minute, move flowers to a vase filled with cold water and leave them for 20 minutes. Flowers will open up to their maximum size. Pictured here: pink peonies.

4. Create a vodka + teaspoon of sugar concoction to keep your them looking flawless longer. Before putting your flowers in a vase, add several drops of vodka and a teaspoon of white sugar, which delays wilting. When they eventually do start to die, add a shot of vodka into the water and the stems will stand up straight again for a day or two.

5. Display succulents in pretty dessert bowls. Dessert bowls make chic pots for a succulent! Simply fill to the brim with potting soil, which you can find at Home Depot, spritz the soil with tap water to moisten it, and then nestle the succulent into the top layer of the soil. Over time, it will begin to grow roots. Just be sure to spray them once a week with the spray bottle until the top of the soil looks wet.

6. Water your orchid with an ice cube, since it’s the perfect amount of hydration. First, repot your orchid into a vase using potting soil, if it isn’t already in a vase, and then water the orchid with one ice cube a week. For larger orchids, use two ice cubes a week. The ice cube melts slowly and gives the orchid a slow drip of hydration, so that it doesn’t drown it.

7. Create a grid with transparent tape to keep your flowers in place when using a shallow vase. To keep short flowers from falling out of shallow vases, make a grid with clear water-resistant floral tape to hold flowers in place. Insert fuller flowers first at an angle since they’ll take up most of the vase/bowl. Next, use medium-size flowers to fill in the remaining holes in the arrangement, and then use the smallest florals as your accent flowers to finish the design.

8. Stack a vase within a vase in order to layer fruit slices along the inside. Find a vase that fits inside another vase with half an inch of room between them. Fill the space between the two vases up most of the way with water before slipping in sliced lemons. Pop your accent flowers in the center vase, and voilà!

9. Dry flowers by hanging them upside down in a cool space. Whether it’s a flower crown of a bouquet that you want to save, the best way to dry flowers is by tying the ends of the stems with a ribbon and hanging them from a nail, the corner of a picture frame, or a key rack, where they’ll serve as decoration.

10. Drop a penny in your vase to keep your flower water fresh longer. The copper in pennies works as an acidifier, which helps prevent fungus or bacteria from growing.

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