Floral Lifestyle Tips & Tricks from Expert Julie Mulligan

Here’s another way to design using the sunny and versatile sunflower. I’ve found that both their large centers and hardiness make them the perfect vessel for holding a votive or tea light candle.

These are two methods that I’ve used and both work great!

1: Painted LED Votive Light

What you’ll need:

• Brown acrylic paint
• Small paint brush
• White plastic LED flameless tea light candles
• Sunflowers

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The sunflower has been adopted as a symbol of happiness, strength, a love of the sun and sunlight. Because the sunflower always turns its face to the sun, it has also come to symbolize faith and the constant search for light, or enlightenment. Everybody loves sunflowers!

Here are a few ways to incorporate the irresistible beauty and warmth of the sunflower into your next summer get-together.

Vintage Sunflower Tabletop

Use Antique Single Flower Vases

For an updated twist on a traditional centerpiece, an assortment of vintage-style green and yellow bottles, each holding a single sunflower, are lined down the center of the table creating a garden of sunflowers with their faces looking up to the sun!

How to Make Sunflower Placemats

Sunflowers come in many different colors and sizes—from mini to giant. Our super-size sunflower placemats make a big impact and are easy to make!

What You’ll Need:

• Cardboard circle – approximately 10″ in diameter
• Salal leaves – 20-25 leaves in various sizes (fake leaves can work too for a longer lasting placemat)
• Glue
• Yellow spray paint
• Brown paint
• Sponge

Step 1

Cut one cardboard circle for each placemat. (This is a good use for old cardboard boxes!) Each circle should be about 10″. I used a dinner plate as a template to trace a circle onto the cardboard, which worked perfectly. Use the sponge to add brown paint to your circle, leaving a bit of the original cardboard color showing through to create a textured look for your sunflower center.

Step 2

Cut all of the salal leaves from the stem and spray paint them yellow. Once they have dried, glue the wider end of the larger sized leaves to the edge of the cardboard circle.

Step 3

Glue the smaller leaves between each of the larger leaves.

With fresh salal leaves, the sunflower placemats can be made a day or two before you plan to use them. Keep them flat and in a cool place.

Sunflowers are one of the most popular flowers, and for good reason. Their shape and bright yellow, orange & red petals are symbolic of the sun. Sunflowers symbolize radiant happiness and all things positive.

There are many different varieties of sunflowers and just as many ways to design and enjoy them. The topiary design is an easy way to display these cheerful blooms. And you can use this one design technique to create many different looks and styles, depending on the size and shape of the container and the sunflowers you use, whether you incorporate foliage and other floral varieties, as well as the accessories you add such as ribbon, raffia etc.

Here is a basic step-by-step for creating a sunflower topiary. The rest is up to you and your own creativity!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

• Container (if the container isn’t waterproof, you’ll need to use a liner such as a plastic bag)
• floral foam
• sunflowers (I find that 6 stems makes a nice size topiary.)
• waterproof tape
• raffia or ribbon
• moss

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