J Schwanke’s Life In Bloom

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by the following... That flower feeling.

At home.

At work.

Or anytime.

CalFlowers is a proud sponsor of "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom," where flowers and wellness go hand in hand.

We have fresh in all our stores, from soups and steaks and all things flour to all things flowering.

Custom fresh arrangements designed by our in-store florists at Albertsons Companies.

With additional support from the following... PassionRoses... Suntory Flowers.

Today's show is of special interest for fans of Halloween as we showcase ways to include flowers in your festivities.

We'll arrange a bouquet of black blooms, create a cemeterrarium, dress up pumpkins, see what's brewing in a cauldron, and dried flowers are given a new life for the holiday.

I'm J Schwanke.

Welcome to "Life in Bloom."

[Thunder crashes, animal howls] "Let the black flower blossom as it may!"

Are you a fan of Halloween like these guys?

Do you start the countdown 100 days ahead of October 31st?

Then this is the show for you as we celebrate life in gloom.

[Thunder crashes, animal howls] And for me, no holiday is complete without flowers or flower crowns.

Right, guys?

As Halloween continues to gain in popularity every year, colors beyond the tried and true black and orange have crept into the celebration.

Purple and acid green are now seasonal staples, and all autumn shades also come into play, especially burgundy and deep reds, to convey a touch of the macabre.

Of course, black is not a color that's common in flowers.

However, let's see what we can conjure up for this special episode of ways to include flowers for spooky and spectacular All Hallows' Eve celebrations.

Black flowers are mysterious and fascinating.

However, black flowers don't truly exist in nature.

So if you're wanting a fantastical black arrangement for Halloween, permanent botanicals or faux flowers are the key.

I picked up a selection of permanent stems at the local craft store.

And notice that they are not all black.

Some are, but others are shades of gray or red or purple with a black overlay.

This will add contrast to this arrangement noir.

I've filled this ebony metal container with Gothic-inspired cutouts with dry flower foam.

This foam is specifically for permanent stems.

It doesn't soak up water, and it's firmer, with great holding power.

Therefore, I'm not going to glue the stems into the arrangement.

This approach also allows me to reuse them in another "boo-quet" in the future.

The dried foam is also a shade of gray, so I don't need to cover it.

The gray will help offset the black blooms -- again, adding contrast.

Larger flowers are ideal for creating a focal emphasis, and contrasting tones of flowers also add to the appeal.

One of the greatest things about permanent arranging is that if you don't like where the flower is, you can change it, or if you cut it too short, you can add more stem with wire and tape.

Some consider permanent arranging easier than arranging fresh flowers.

This is a great centerpiece for a Halloween party.

You might even use it to decorate the "boo-fet."

[Thunder crashes, animal howls] Happy celebrating!

It seems that cemeterrariums are a thing.

I had a friend who sent me a picture of this and said, "You need to do it on your 'Life in Gloom' show."

[Thunder crashes, animal howls] And I thought it was a great idea.

I found this wonderful little black Gothic greenhouse.

And it has a little clip on the side so we can open it up inside.

In here, I've put a flat soaked piece of flower foam.

We have some moss and some different items that we're going to add in there.

But then I found these little, tiny cemetery markers, little miniatures that'll be perfect for our cemeterrarium.

I'm placing permanent black branches that I got at the craft store.

I have one tall one I'm going to add at the very end, after I close the lid.

We're adding foxtail ferns -- just the tips.

It makes them look like arborvitae.

I grabbed a couple branches of my ninebark with a little blossom at the bottom, so it looks like a tree and a bush that goes together.

I'm cutting apart the head of a green trick Dianthus, and those will be like little bushes or mossy areas in our cemeterrarium.

This little Victorian greenhouse has a recessed bottom, so that soaked piece of black flower foam in the bottom is a wonderful base.

It's great because we can use fresh flowers and foliage into the foam, as well as other permanent items.

I'm not going to worry about them expiring because it will add to the effect.

I'm using the different types of moss as bushes or shrubs.

I'm even using the little crumbs and the leavings from it and using that to cover up black foam.

Then we can place our tombstones.

Put the largest one on a moss base towards the back, and I'm working in height, graduating down towards the front.

Once we close the lid, I make sure everybody gets inside... and then I can clip the latch.

I'll go back in with my bigger permanent branch and add it towards the back.

[Thunder crashes, animal howls] This looks so great and so spooky.

Our cemeterrarium is all ready.

[Thunder crashes, animal howls] We're doing our featured flower a little differently.

We're talking about black flowers.

When I had my flower shop, whenever I would have a new hire, I would immediately give them a rose and a can of black spray paint, because that's what everyone wants to do when they go to work in a flower shop -- they want to paint a rose black.

And there's an infatuation about black flowers, and especially about a rose that's black.

We've had black calla lilies on our show before, and there are black roses and black tulips and black hellebores, but those aren't officially really totally black -- they're either a very dark purple or a very dark red, kind of like this hydrangea.

It looks black, but it's kind of a purply color.

This one has a -- has red undertones that are in there.

So if you want a flower that is officially all black, you're going to have to settle for permanent botanicals.

Today, we'll be using flowers that match our pumpkins.

We have a purple pumpkin and our basil pumpkin and our orange pumpkin.

So we'll be using Kermit pompons, some orange Hypericum, amethyst Alstroemeria, and these beautiful Free Spirit roses.

Pumpkins make an ideal vessel for fresh flowers, and we can glamorize the pumpkins with an unexpected color and glitter stem or accent and create a sparkling Halloween centerpiece.

These pumpkins have been painted with unique colors of basil and amethyst, and accented with craft glue and microfine glitter.

Then I simply hollowed out the orange pumpkin and filled it with silk flower foam.

Now it's ready for fresh flowers in a festive color palette.

I've grouped the flowers together.

It gives it more impact to have all the Alstroemeria together in one spot, or grouping the pompons together or the Hypericum.

It helps it blend better with the big roses that we have inside there.

For our topper, I inserted two wood picks into the top of the pumpkin.

I've inserted two so that it won't spin.

We'll take that and insert it right directly into the foam.

It kicks off to the side, so it's kind of like a little jaunty hat.

And it looks great with the rest of the arrangement.

Our other two pumpkins join our collection, and we're all ready for a very colorful and festive Halloween.

I saw this black cauldron, and I couldn't resist.

I thought it would be fun to create an arrangement inside there, but also have a special effect.

So we're using our "vase inside a vase" technique, where we've placed a cylinder base on the inside that has water in it, and then we have water on the outside as well.

Our arrangement is going to fit into the cylinder container.

And we'll create that first using some chrysanthemums and carnations and roses that are in purples and lavenders and a little accent of this green Viburnum bush.

Let me show you how we put that together.

I'm gathering all these pieces together in my hand, and the reason that I'm going to do that is so that we can bind them together, so I can lift them easily in and out of that middle container.

So I just look at those flowers and put them together.

I like how the different tones of purple and lavender look a little bit like a bubbling concoction that would be inside a cauldron.

I'm removing any leaves that are going to fall below the waterline.

That's important so that our flowers last a long time.

And it's just going to sit right on top of this.

So that looks pretty good.

I'm going to tie it together using my kraft-covered wire.

Just twist those ends together so that it's nice and tight.

And I want to give it a little bit of an expanse.

So I don't want it to sit down right on top of that -- I want it to have a little bit of a upside.

So I may have to trim this a couple times to get it perfect.

I always go longer first... because I can always make it shorter.

It's a little bit long yet.

Ah, that's going to be perfect.

So, see, we still have room in there.

So now it's time for our special effect.

We've got dry ice that we've broken up into small pieces.

We can take out our arrangement, and we're going to put the dry ice around the outside, not in the vase with the flowers.

Always use gloves when you're working with dry ice, and always be careful.

So now we've got our special effect.

Remember that you'll need to warm up the water and change it out to do it several times throughout the evening, but it's a wonderful special effect.

Dried flowers are spooky -- and even more so when we add cobwebs.

Let me show you how to recycle some expired dahlia blooms that I've dried into an elegant Halloween decoration.

Our container is a wooden box filled with dry flower foam.

I've wrapped it with a yard of Halloween ribbon, then added a manzanita branch and covered the dry foam with small rocks.

Now it's time to add our dried dahlias.

These are fragile, and I love the muted colors that result from drying them.

This is fun, but it would be great if I could have some spider webs.

And this is a trick I learned a long time ago.

You need two pieces of Styrofoam.

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to dip it in some hot pan melt glue.

You could also use glue from a glue gun.

And I just get a little bit of glue in between the two pieces.

I don't want very much.

And so then I can just take it and gently add... a few spider webs over the top of my arrangement.

This is an unexpected way to reuse dried blossoms and create our own cobwebs for a ghostly... [Thunder crashes, animal howls] ...life in gloom boo-quet.

So, you know I love flower crowns.

And for "Life in Gloom," I thought it would be great to create a flower crown for a pumpkin.

You could make it out of fresh flowers.

You could also make it out of artificial if you wanted it to last the whole season.

But I thought today it would be great to use fresh flowers.

We're working with an aluminum wire.

You can get this at the craft store.

Very easy to work with, very pliable.

And we're cutting a length that'll fit around our pumpkin.

So I'll start with one end, and we make a loop.

So I'm just twisting it into a loop.

And that's going to be our one end.

Then we'll bring it around our pumpkin.

And that's going to be about the length that we wanted, because as we add the extra flowers to it, it's going to get a little bit bigger.

So I make a bend at the end.

That's where that ring is going to be when we're ready for it.

And then we're going to straighten this out again, and we're going to add flowers, wrapping them all the way down the end.

I wrap them with the kraft-covered wire.

So, this kraft-covered wire is a wire that's covered with kraft paper.

And we're going to use that and lay our flowers on here and wrap in one continuous piece all the way to the end.

So we'll lay a couple pieces right at the very top.

And this is actually to conceal that ring that we have at the end.

So we've got those things that are going to conceal that.

We've got about six inches that's going to go this direction.

And then we start winding around this.

This is important because having that six inches back here is going to make sure that, as we wrap it around, we've tied it in there tight.

So then, every item that we add, we add on top of the last item and wrap a couple times around.

We also want to make sure that we're always going around in the same direction.

You can't turn it around in your hand and then go the other direction because it'll all unwind itself.

So laying a rose on top... turning it.

Bringing in a carnation and turning it.

I'm going to add a long piece of our ninebark.

I use that long piece in there, and I'm leaving those leaves on there so that they can be in other places.

But I do want to trim that stem off so that we've got a little bit less bulk as we go down.

If you're having trouble with that, you can reverse it and work on it from this direction.

I can do that, but I have to make sure I keep my wire going in the same direction.

Make sure it's nice and tight at the end.

Now, rather than getting this all caught up, I'll cut this off.

And I'm giving myself about two feet of that extra.

Remember that little loop?

It's right down inside here.

We're going to take our wire, and we're going to go through that loop, and we're going to pull this up nice and tight.

And we're going to wrap that wire around that.

I can use this extra wire to lay down some of these additional pieces to help cover up that end.

So then I just grab a little bit of that kraft wire and my end, and I twist it into a little knot that has it all put together.

So we'll take our pumpkin, and we'll put on our flower crown.

That's the thing I love about flower crowns.

I've always said -- whenever you put a flower crown on someone's head, they always smile.

So many people are devotees of Halloween nowadays.

I'm sure you enjoyed our take on this spooky time of year, with plenty of inspiration to celebrate whenever the mood strikes.

For "Life in Gloom"... [Thunder crashes, animal howls] ...I'm J Schwanke.

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is filmed in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Visit uBloom.com to access all episodes of "Life in Bloom," plus exclusive flower videos, J's newsletter and blog, find recipes, flower tips, techniques, and much more.

Be sure to follow "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" on social media.

"J Schwanke's Life in Bloom" is brought to you by the following... That flower feeling.

At home.

At work.

Or anytime.

CalFlowers is a proud sponsor of where flowers and wellness go hand in hand.

We have fresh in all our stores, from soups and steaks and all things flour to all things flowering.

Custom fresh arrangements designed by our in-store florists at Albertsons Companies.

With additional support from the following... PassionRoses... Suntory Flowers.

Closed caption funding provided by fabulousflorals.com.