Pick three big flowers and hold them up in a bundle. It might appear pretty close up, but take a few seconds to look at your hand. The focal flowers in your hand are fighting over space. The petals overlap each other, the shapes get muddled. Focal flowers should get some attention in a bouquet, but they also need some room.
In a given bouquet, the focal flower will be the most striking flower in shape, color, or size, usually a rose, peony, dahlia, ranunculus, or chrysanthemum, or a bloom of similar size or form. For a vase that is small, you probably won’t need many of them: One to three focal flowers is more than enough for a given design, especially if you have a supporting cast made from filler flowers and foliage.
Sometimes a designer will put too many pretty flowers together, or even too many focal flowers in the same arrangement, feeling as though no pretty bloom should be left unturned. As a result, a first attempt at a small vase might have lots of large blooms in the center of the composition to make it feel finished or rich, but in actuality, the focal flowers are of the same height, direction, and size. There is no negative space between petals, and instead of each flower in your vase getting its due, you have a pile of pretty flowers without a focal point.
It can be difficult to decide when not to put a bloom in a bouquet, so before you place any flowers in your vase, try to decide which blooms will be leading the arrangement, or which ones you will leave out this time. Is it bigger or smaller? Is it opened up more or less? Are its stems sturdy or floppy? Does its color really stand out, or is it a bit paler? Do the petals take on a more interesting curve? Take these and other details into consideration before putting your chosen blooms together.
Practice with a vase of flowers that only has two blooms you consider focal (you can add filler flowers later), and a few stems of foliage. Place one focal flower on top or slightly above the opening of your vase. Then place a second one slightly lower or off to the side. Turn the container so that the front is a different row. Once the main flowers have their places to rest, you can add some filler flowers and the greenery will help tie the two main blooms together.
If it feels like there are too many blooms in the final design, try taking one of your focal flowers out before adding any other. It seems strange, at first, because you would be removing some of the flowers from your bouquet, but when a focal flower has space in an arrangement, it’s often easier to read. There is space to see what the bloom looks like, filler flowers can help fill in gaps, and the greenery can help bring life to the arrangement.
A great way to look at the final results is to look between your focal flowers, or look through them. Are there spaces between where petals are not pressed together? Are some focal flowers a bit higher than others, or slightly turned away at a different angle? Is one focal flower clearly doing more than the others in the vase? When focal flowers have enough room, you can see your flowers a bit more distinctly, even if there are only a few stems altogether.