by: Max McCarty
Storing Silk Flower Stems for your Silk Flower Arrangements and other Crafts.
For your crafters that like to work with silk flowers for all your many hobbies, if you are like me, it is hard to find a method of storage for all your silk flower supplies. I like making silk flower arrangements, artificial floral candle rings and wreaths, you usually like to keep supplies around since you find great deals when you're shopping. You probably have found that storing them by laying them down does nothing but ruin its posture. Or storing them in vases takes up a lot of floor or shelf space, and you also have to compensate for the size of each container. Today I wanted provide a quick how to article stepping you through the process of creating a platform that allows you to store your many different silk flower supplies with a small foot print.
The premise for the design is t o take advantage of height and shape of silk flower stems to "stack" your silk flowers in an organized and easily maintainable way. You can picture a pole to hang coats, but instead of hooks were going to use rings to hold the flowers at an angle.
Items you will need:
6' long / 4" diameter PVC pipe
6' long / 5" diameter PVC pipe
1" woods screws (approx 30)
2' sq. piece of " particle board
3 x L shaped bracket (should have at least a drilled whole in each in, two in each end would be even better. Make sure the holes are not larger than the head on the 1" wood screws.)
Equipment you will need:
Phillips Screwdriver (the neck of the screw driver -the metal part- will need to be most likely 5-6" long.
power screwdriver if you have it)
Power drill
Approx 3/8 drill bit (must drill holes bigger than the head of your wood screws)
Some type of power saw or hand saw to cut the PVC pipe.
You can change the dimensions of this design to fit your needs easily. I am making this at 6' high, but could be at any height, but I probably wouldn't go below 3'. Once you get the hang of what you are accomplishing it will be a breeze to complete. The hardest part will be figuring out the layout of what you want.
All the items I mentioned above can be obtained from your local hardware store. You are also not required to have exactly those dimensions. If your retailer carries 3" diameter PVC only, you can use that, it just won't hold as many silk flower ste ms as a 4" or 5" diameter pipe. The "L" shaped brackets are used for securing items like two boards perpendicular to each other. In our case, were going to use it to fasten the pole
Let's start by picturing your standard http://ambler.temple.edu/arboretum/gardens pole for hanging coats on. We're going to recreate this concept by fastening one of the poles to the 2' sq particle board we have.
With the 2' particle board flat on the ground we will stand the 6' long, 4" diameter PVC pipe on end on top of, and in the middle of the board we have flat on the ground. (This is the only part an extra pair of hands would come in handy).
If you are lucky to have someone hold the pipe the following will not be a problem. We are going to take the 3 "L" shaped brackets and place them equally around the pipe, with one end flush agains t the side of the pipe, while the other end of the bracket is flush with board.
You will then use the 1" wooden screws to fasten one end of the bracket to the board, and the other end to the pole. As I mentioned above, if you can find brackets that have 2 holes on each end, if will be even more secure.
(TIP) if don't have someone that can support the pole, you can opt to set the brackets around the pipe the way they will end up, mark the holes on the board (only), then remove the pipe. You can then proceed to fasten the brackets to the 2' sq particle board first. Then proceed to put the pipe back in-between all three brackets and finish off securing the top part of each bracket to the pipe - make sure the pipe is plumb (straight up and down).
We will now proceed to take the second 6' long PVC pipe and cut it in segments of 4" long pieces. This should give you approximately 18 pieces. This might or mig ht not be enough depending on how big you are making this or how much you want to cram in on this pole. If you need more, you'll need another pole PVC pipe to cut more 4" long pieces.
We are now going to use our drill to drill "a" hole on one side of each of the 4" long pieces of PVC pipe we cut. Make sure to drill the hole in the dead middle of the ring. To be clearer, I mean the middle as in between the top and bottom of the ring. We are going to use this hole, to put our long neck Phillips screwdriver through in order to turn the screw that will fasten the opposite side to the pole (more on that in a minute).
Once you are done drilling the hole through all the pieces, we are going to start at the bottom of the pole and work our way up. You must stop and understand that the intentions are not to set the holder so it is holding the group of silk flower stems perpendicular to the ground. Rather at a 90 degree angle. This is important as you will want to start high en ough off the ground on the pole so that at 90 degrees the bottom of the stems is not touching the ground. You will probably have to put your stems through the ring (holder) and place against the pole to find the right starting point. This is where you would hold them at a 90 degree angle to get the right height.
Holding the 4" pipe piece against the pipe, we are going to line up the side that is the very opposite side from the side you drilled the hole. It would be idea to have someone hold this piece so you can concentrate on fastening. Place the wooden screw inside the ring, using your other hand feed the screwdriver through the hole. And commence with fastening the screw through the ring into the pole.
With a tight fit, you should find that you can swivel the ring around. We will want to put it at 90 degree angle to figure out where the next one will go.
Now that we have one on, we can figure out how we are going to position the rest. You can definitely ex periment with this depending on the length of your silk flower stems, but in most cases I found two idea methods:
Staggering the rings around the pole as you work your way up or
Picture a candy cane strip as it works its way up the pole.
Once you have proceeded to fasten each of your 4" rings to the pole, you should find that you can easily adjust their angle to accommodate the different lengths of stems and what is beneath and below each ring. Once completed, you can then fill each ring with your silk flower stems.
You should now find that you have assembled a 6' pole, aligned with holders for silk flower stems. You can group them by project, or by type. What I have found is setting them into the holder, then taking the stems and giving them a very slight tub to snug them in place helps. There are a ton of other bells and whistles that am a not exploring in this article that you can add or change about your setup. I have included a few of those ideas in the below additional tip section. Enjoy.
Below are a couple additional tips:
When placing the bunches of stems in each ring, be careful not to overcrowd
Other great ideas is taking small 2"-3" pipe and cutting into 5" lengths
In open areas where you can't place the large 4" pipe pieces, you can then Sprinkler Installation Flower Mound place these small pieces perpendicular with the ground against the pole to hold additional small silk flower supplies (close against the pole) out of the way of the larger holders.
You could leave an area for hanging silk flower wreaths or silk flower candle rings. Based on the diameter of your wreaths or candle rings, you would leave this much room on the pole before your holders start. Then taking a 1" PVC pipe (length is up to you) and by drilling a slightly bigger hole through the middle of the main pole, slide your 1" pipe through and create a pla ce to 'hang' your wreaths and candle rings.
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