If You Have a Favorite Bouquet

If you have a favorite artificial bouquet that is looking kind of weathered and worn it can be brought back to its former beauty with a little effort on your part, especially if it is a silk bouquet. These can last longer than any other artificial bouquet. All it takes is a little attention from you for 5 minutes every three to six months. As with anything in your house, silk bouquets get droopy and dusty and do need some attention now and then.

To clean your bouquet you can rice clean it. This can be done by placing your bouquet in a shopping bag along with a half cup of rice, twist it closed and shake it for about sixty seconds. What happens inside is the rice becomes loaded with static electricity and the dust will attach itself to the rice. In the past some people used to use salt, but it was found to be too harsh and would sometimes scratch the flowers, whereas white rice is softer and not damage your flowers at all.

After you have cleaned your flowers then you have to fluff them. This just involves turning your bouquet upside down and giving them three or four good shakes. This not only loosens the rice that's left on the flowers, but also fluffs up your bouquet to look like new again. After fluffing you have to arrange the flowers to their original position. Just use your hand go to the back of the plant and start pushing the stems toward the front. This is called plumping the bouquet. Once you have gotten all of them back to the right position you can do some teasing with the flowers to help them take their original shape this may involve some pulling and pushing.

The things you don't do to clean your bouquet is spray them with water. You may have heard somewhere you can do this but if you use this method the water mixed with the dust can stain your beautiful bouquet so that it will never look the same again so stay away from the water! Stay with the rice to have a long lasting bouquet.

For lots of information on bouquets and other related topics, visit The Flowers Guide at www.theflowersguide.com