How to Create a Holiday Centerpiece - Boxwood Tree

Suzanne Taylor: My name is Suzanne Taylor from Artistic Gardens, Flower Shop in St. Johnsbury, Vermont and I am going to show you how to make a boxwood tree. The materials that you'll need will be glass millimeter balls, little pine cones, a holiday type ribbon, and some boxwood. You'll need a block of floral foam and a container to make the arrangement in. First we'll carve the oasis or the floral foam to fit the container. So I'll take a chunk of each. Then I'll float it in my water, there; place it in there. Use this oasis tape, it sticks on wet foam and glass containers and it'll hold that in place. You want to secure it, really secured because you don't want it to topple out or over. Make sure it's well balanced. Now this is where you need your clips, clippers; and where are they? Right here. You're just going to cut some pieces, have them come straight out. If you are going to want to make a pyramid shape like a Christmas tree, find a fairly straight one for the top. Then you just want to fill it in the triangular form keeping this imaginary line going. I just want to get this all covered. Boxwood trees will last a long, long time. You can make them at the beginning of December and a lot of times they're still going if you keep them watered in to February. Once you have your floral foam covered and you're ready to decorate your tree, you can shape it first just to see, make sure there is no empty spots and you can just take your scissors, not your ribbon scissors but your other scissors, and just kind of trim it a little. So it gets a nice type shape. You can make it a very pointy shape or round it. Then you want to start decorating it. First we'll put the bows in. So I'll show you how to make a bow. I can make them very quickly. You take your ribbon and you just loop it back and forth almost like you're weaving, make here one in the center. I am only going to do two loops on each side. I cut it off with the sharp scissors and I only use these for ribbon. Then put a wire right through the center, like so and then you take one of your long sticks, Callie sticks, and twist it around there, and then you have it on the stick. So you just insert these in random places, just like you're decorating a little tree. I don't want it to be too symmetrical. Then after you have your stick, you can add your glass balls. I put these on sticks also because the wire is not long enough. So I just twist them around like that and then I just stick them in a random pattern. Keep plugging away, like so and then I am going to use the little pine cones. Now here is where the glue pen comes in, really handy. You can wire each of these pine cones and then put it on the stick if you would like but it saves a lot of time, if you just put a little glue on them and just stuck them in. Now when it dries, it'll be stuck to the tree. It's a great way to decorate it and it saves a lot of time. You can also add little ornaments, tinsel, glittered wire, even little lights. You just glue this right in. Glue is hot. Let's say one right there. Then for the top I made a ribbon with a lot of streamers on it and I'll just put that on the top and have those come down. There is your boxwood tree. This is the last thing on our videos. I hope you find these helpful.