Ideas for Artificial Flowers

Cake Decorating

• Instead of decorating a cake with flowers made from sugary colored frosting, use artificial flowers to provide the floral design. To prevent a hapless diner from carelessly munching on the non-edible flowers, attach the flowers to a base. This technique allows the server to easily remove the base (with the flowers attached) prior to cutting the cake. One way to do this is by using a small sheet of clear plastic as the base. Affix the flowers to the base using a hot glue gun before setting the cake on the base.

Altered Books

• To create an altered book, the artist begins with a regular book (often an old hardback) and transforms it into an object with new meaning and intent. Artists create altered books by decorating, folding, cutting or eliminating pages, applying decoupage or paint and gluing on embellishments such as artificial flowers. When using artificial flowers to decorate your altered book, you can use the entire flower or disassemble it, using just the leaves or petals. Cut out a series of pages in the book to create a cavity for a decorative artificial flower. When opening the book, the flower appears, like a small hidden treasure.

Artist Trading Cards

• Artist trading cards (ATC), initially designed as a trading card amongst artists, evolved into a commodity coveted by non-artists. The artist creates a miniature work of art on a small canvas the size of a standard playing card. Some artists use individual playing cards as canvases, while others use pieces of cardboard cut to size. The picture created might be a painting or collage and often includes three-dimensional embellishments such as artificial flowers. Use small artificial flowers for decorating your ATC. Be creative in your placement of the flowers. For example, after painting a small vase of flowers on your ATC, glue on tiny three-dimensional flowers to fill the one-dimensional vase.

Greeting Cards

• Homemade greeting cards can include embellishments glued to the face or interior of the card. For the greeting-card artist, one possible embellishment is the artificial flower, which is sturdier than the dried variety and will hold up when sent through the mail.

Floral Arrangements

• The most basic of uses for artificial flowers is the floral arrangement. Use a vase, basket, pot or wreath to create a vivid floral arrangement that requires no watering and withstands storage and shipping. Unlike dried flowers, artificial flowers are truer in appearance to the real flowers they mimic. It's difficult to distinguish high-quality artificial flowers from real flowers without close inspection. Another advantage of artificial flowers is that they can be washed when dirty or dusty.

Fashion

• Create fashion with artificial flowers. Glue them to hats, hatbands, hair barrettes and hair combs. Use them to make decorative brooches or flower bracelets. Decorate your handbag or beach bag with artificial flowers, or use them to dress up a belt or pair of shoes.