How to Use Wood Floral Picks in Wreaths

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I choose to use wood floral picks on my flower or greenery stems that are either too thin or too short.  This ensures I have strong mechanics with my wreaths and it enhances the overall quality of the wreath construction.  My customers keep coming back to purchase from me because they know I pay attention to detail down to the mechanics of the wreath base and produce strong quality wreaths. This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Tips on How to Use Wood Floral Picks

If a flower stem is too thin or the hot glue will melt the stem, then adding a wood floral pick helps sure up the stem, making it sturdy and giving more space for the hot glue to adhere.  In other words, the wood picks help to make the flower or greenery stems meatier and therefore stronger.

If a flower or greenery stem is too short, then adding a wood floral pick will help to make the stem longer.  Sometimes I need more depth in my wreaths and adding flower or greenery stems at different depth levels helps to create this and gives added fullness to the wreath.  Adding wood picks can help extend the length of the flower stem to achieve this.

There are different lengths of wood floral picks and they come in sizes such as 3”, 4”, 6” and 8” both wired and unwired.  My go to size for wood picks is typically 4” wired picks. This seems to work best for my wreath making craft…and easier for my fat fingers!  Use the wire attached to the wood pick to wrap around the floral stem to secure the flower to the wood pick. The wood floral pick also has a point on the end making it great for sticking into grapevine wreaths or floral foam if you are into floral design.

After you wrap the wire of the floral pick securely and tightly around the stem, you want to cover the wire with floral tape.  Adding floral tape on top of the wire helps to keep the wire in place. Floral tape is not sticky until you stretch it and then it releases the sticky residue.  Floral tape sticks strongly to itself so, as you wrap, pull the tape to stretch it so it adheres and then overlap it about 1/2 of its width. Floral tape is made in several colors; I prefer green for my evergreen wreaths, brown for my grapevine wreaths and white used for wreaths with a white base used during Christmas and July 4th.  Floral tape comes in several widths but I find ½ inch works well and is easily found in stores.

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How to Use Wood Floral Picks

Steps for adding wood floral picks to flower or greenery stems for wreaths:

1. Place the flower stem into the wreath to measure how far you want the flower to come out from the wreath. Use your fingers to hold the flower stem and to mark it. Then cut the flower stem 3” below that mark.
2. While still holding the flower in your fingers, place the top of the wooden pick to the mark measured with your fingers and snugly wrap the wire from the pick around the stem of the flower and the pick working your way down the pick.  Keep the wire tight the entire time you are wrapping. It’s best when you also wrap the wire below the flower stem and then back up so your flower won’t slip (see video below).  Wrapping the wire tight does take practice but it is easy to grasp.
3. Using floral tape, pull a section of the tape to activate the stickiness. Then wrap the tape around the wood pick you just wired onto the flower stem making sure to overlap the tape as you wrap down the wood pick. Tape helps keep the wire in place.
4. Use hot glue or pan glue whichever you prefer to add glue on top of the floral tape of the wood pick and quickly stick the glued portion into your wreath.

When all of your flowers are glued into your wreath don’t forget to turn your wreath over and cut the wood floral picks short so they do not protrude from the back of the wreath. Cover these picks with either sheet moss or left over silk flower leaves to help cover your mechanics.

Here is a video clip showing you step-by-step how I use wood floral picks. This video clip is from my Silk Flower Christmas Wreath Video Tutorial:

As you can see, using wood floral picks does take practice but it is easy to grasp.

I hope this tip of how to use wood floral picks in wreaths helps you in your wreath making craft. Let me know what you think or what tips you have or prefer. These are the exact wooden floral picks I use. I purchase them in quantity to save money on shipping.

Happy Wreathing,

Julie

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