Things To Consider When Purchasing Silk Flowers
Posted on Feb 26, 2010 under silk flowers | Comments are offPurchasing silk flowers can sometimes seem more trouble than they are worth. You start out thinking you will just pick up a nice arrangement and avoid the usual problems associated with real plants. Depending upon where you’re looking however, this seemingly simple task can turn into a headache and leave you deciding to forget the whole idea and just put up with the care, cleaning, and cost of real flowers instead.Here I am going to take a stab at giving you a few pointers on what to look for when purchasing an artificial flower arrangement. Hopefully I can keep it simple and concise, and neither of us will have had to empty the aspirin bottle before the end.The first rule is avoid the usual department stores and everything marts. What they have the vast majority of the time is low quality, poorly made, and wouldn’t fool your nearsighted grandmother. You may think you will find a bargain, but what you end up with is a twenty dollar waste of time. Their offerings are cheap, because they ARE cheap.Here are some things to look for in terms of determining quality.A good arrangement will have some common traits no matter what style it is. The first thing to look for is stem quality. Can you easily see the joints where blooms meet the stem? Are the edges of the leaves or blooms frayed, or showing loose threads? Is there a lot of, or large pieces of, “casting flash” on any of the plastic parts? If so, pass them by. These traits mean little concern was given to quality materials, and probably even less to quality construction. Whenever I see these, I get a mental picture of a giant machine with “Acme” printed on the side pounding blocks of plastic into little flower stems.
Is the arrangement full? Are there great gaps in between the stems? Unless it is an item designed to showcase individual stems, such as can be found with pieces like Calla lilies, the arrangement should be full, even lush. Just like with a real flower arrangement. Sparse filler, randomly spaced between bare stems with lots of open space between usually is not a design trait. It’s a cheapness trait. It means someone tried to make the arrangement look larger, while putting less into it. Space equals air, and air is free. And all you’ll get is extra air with a sparse arrangement. Have a look at some of these examples, to get a good idea what I mean.The base. As with any arrangement, you should not see green foam. Soil isn’t green, and neither is water. At least it shouldn’t be, and if it is, yuck! If you can’t see the green foam, did they use a cover material? Moss is the usual choice, and it should not hang over the sides, nor should it easily flop around. You should not be able to see through it, and it should be secured well enough that should you tilt the arrangement over, it does not move.Continuing with the base. What is it made of? With all the possibilities available, plastic really has little place in a quality arrangements base. Ceramic, glass, and even resins are all preferable to plastic, and offer much greater durability, style, and variety. Again, the materials used offer great insight into the quality of the arrangement as a whole. Plastic is cheap, and that is the only real factor in its favor.Just like with most everything else, there is a line where something stops being a bargain, and instead becomes just plain cheap. We become desensitized to cheap because it’s all around us. We think because something can be gotten for less, it must be a good deal. But in silk flowers, we can see quite well that this just isn’t true, and that getting your money’s worth, isn’t always about giving as little of your money as possible.I hope this has been helpful to you, and remember that it’s fine to look for cheap, but you don’t have to settle for cheap.
