The rose bouquet handle is going to now get some special treatment. Once all my greens are in place, I tape down the handle with florist tape, stretching it so it will adhere to itself.
Now I'm ready to add my cleaned flower stems that I cut off from the original roses and button mums.
You can see that even short stemmed roses have pretty long stems and can probably be cut in half, giving you plenty of stems to conceal the handle with.
I first clean off the lower leaves and remove any thorns on the cut stems.
I do leave some rose leaves attached to the stem on at the top to help conceal the diagonal cut on the top of the stem.
I put a little more floral clay around the handle to help hold these stems in place as I'm placing them around the bouquet handle.
Press hard to get the stems to stick to the clay and stay in place.
After I gather the stems in place, I squeeze tightly at the top so the cleaned stems will adhere to the floral clay.
I then use florist tape to hold the stems in place around the bouquet handle. Pull as you tape, stretching it so it will adhere to itself.
Add in more stems as needed. They will be a little long at this point - you will have to trim off to your desired length after you are done taping into place.
I use bunch cutters, which work much better than household scissors. The special blades cut cleanly into the slippery stems, giving a clean cut at the bottom through the thickest rose stems.
You can see I keep the stems much shorter, but still long enough to conceal the end of the bouquet holder in the center of the stems.
You may have to add more stems until you cannot see the holder any longer.
I continue to add, but keep in mind I don't want the handle uncomfortable to hold. Traditional hand tied bouquets often results in an uncomfortably large "club like" handle that adds a lot of weight and bulkiness to a bouquet.
Now you can see the neat appearance after you are done adding the cut stems and shortening them to the desired length. Between the floral clay and corsage tape, the stems are locked into place and don't move.