Hello!
This is gonna be actually our first
installment of 30 things that I want to learn before I turn 30.
And here I have Parini
A seasoned 30 year old
31! oh my god I'm turning 32.
We're forgetting about that. It doesn't count in 2020
So I wanted some ways to 1) Brighten up my apartment
I pretty much have a brown thumb
My apartment was very bare for a while
It was looking like a serial killer lived here. It was just like white walls for a long time.
So I'd love tips on 1) How to put this together but also 2) How to maintain it
I'd like I'd love for it to last more than like two days
The first step that we already did was go to the flower shop
These are kind of starting to open. They're not completely bloomed
like some of these or like this yellow one
over here. These probably got like 2-3 days left.
So this will open over the course of the week so it'll get bigger and bigger and bigger.
I really like this flat leaf eucalyptus because it looks more leafy
If you want some more visual interest
Now you've taken your flowers, you brought it home, what's the next step?
So first things first is you need to get
these flowers in water as fast as possible
So I have this giant bucket
If you have like a large big vase or even like a pot
That's where I put the flowers in
I do not use flower food
I've not had very good success
I'm sorry, WHAT?
You don't use flower food?!
That's specifically for the flowers
You gotta read the directions like you gotta mix that packet into a gallon of water
and then you use that water but like
most people aren't using a gallon of
water for them. People are just pouring the packet in the vase
So then you stir it and then your flowers
are like "UHHHHH"
And then they die
Let's start with the roses first
So here's our headliner and here's my vase which is
honestly a repurposed pickle jar. You don't need anything fancy
But you do need to CLEAN it
You do need to clean it so you do need to clean it yeah you gotta like wash it and stuff before you put flowers in it
We're not putting this in pickle juice
Yeah, THAT I know
I want my flowers to be like this
tall above the top of my base
So I pretty much have to trim all of this
excess off
And we want it cut diagonally because we want as much water to go in
So by cutting it diagonally we've increase the surface area
based on your water line, you don't want ANY leaves in the water
It's going to make your flowers rot
When did you start learning how to do this and why did you start?
So years ago just for fun because 
honestly I got tired of nobody buying me flowers
So I started buying myself flowers and
I really really really really enjoy flowers
And then I started flowers reading up on like different textures
and different ways to enrage
FLORAL ARRANGE
And over the years especially just last
year I got pretty serious about it where
like I would go to a lot of classes
like those you know floral arranging workshops for fun
just to like learn more
And then I started youtubing a lot of things around color theory
and honestly floral arranging it's just like another art form
like all the same design
principles apply in terms of like color
use of texture like constructing a
design
So what we're gonna do now is
build the scaffolding so this is where
our greens come in handy
so the greens are always going to be our foundation
place them you want to kind of start criss-crossing them
that way so you want
to like to start creating like a grid to
which the stems of your greens and again
we don't want any leaves in the water so
So now we're going to take our Michelles
and Kellys
our accent flowers now
we're gonna put these in
start layering them into our scaffoldings.
so you want to do this because our
focal flowers, we want them to be supported
we want them to really kind of shine and we want
to control where they go in the
arrangement so that's why they're gonna
go in last
because once you start
placing these flowers in it gets a
little bit difficult to like start
rearranging them once they're all kind
of like settled into place
So with these you can be pretty
intentional about where you place these
and like what you can do is also kind of
like spin your vase around to make sure
that you're getting even coverage
and then be really gentle when you're
putting in your flowers because you want
to kind of hold them at mid-length and
then gently kind of nudge them into
where you want them to go because you
don't want the stem to break
because everyone's gonna cry
it's kind of like operation!
Kind of! Except the opposite you're putting it in yes but operation
You just want to make sure that
there's enough visual interest where
your like eyes kind of dance around
the arrangement like you want you know
some to be hanging you want you know
some to be upright
you just want it to be like all around, 360 pretty
This isn't like a lampshade where like "shit I got like a stain on it"
so I feel like you know turn it in one direction or you know the
couch cushion you just like flip it over
something
No you can't do that. You can't do that with flowers
All the damage you will see right upfront
There is no hiding
These could last up to like a week and a half? two weeks?
I would say definitely a week
if you take care of them appropriately
they can go a little bit longer than that
Snapdragons don't have as long of a life,
but here's the thing like if you
have different flowers in your arrangement
like this and like let's say that
snapdragons start to wilt and die off
If you pull them out your roses are
gonna last longer so then you just make
a smaller rose arrangement
yeah just take out the ones that are dead
yeah and then just like put them in
like smaller vases that way you can
have them for a longer period of time
Well thank you so much!
*awkward air hug*
What else have you been learning about during this...TIME?
These...unprecedented times. These TRYING times...
I've been teaching myself a lot of graphic design
part of quarantine was launching my Instagram
Wait I thought you had it for before that, no?
so I started posting but then I was 
was kind of just like willy-nilly
oh look at this! I literally do this for a living like let me actually do it the right way
and then I learning to use Canva
and then do a little bit in Adobe creative
So I've been learning to like do more on
that stuff as well
I love that.Those are always good be good skills to have professionally and personally
Yeah I think so too
