How To Change a Flower's Color

Did you know that you can change the color of flowers, real or

fake by using spray paint? 

For real flowers, the product I like is Design Master Colortool.

This is not an advertisement...it is just a good product. 

You can get this paint at Michael's and Walmart. 

The color comes out in a fine mist and gives you control of

how much or little color you want to add to the flower. 

For a wedding I was helping with, the bride wanted pink and

white hydrangeas. It was cheaper to get white hydrangeas in

a bulk order and then spray some of them pink. 

To protect the leaves from getting paint on them, you can put

a paper towel over them. It is a good idea to also cover your 

hand with a plastic glove to keep it from paint also. 

Hold the spray can about 18" away from the flower to keep the

propellant from "freezing" the real flower. 

Ooops! This was probably not 18" away. Luckily it did not harm the flower. 

You can decide how much or little color to add to the flower.

Try to leave some of the original color to add variation, and 

thus reality, to the painted flower. 

It is almost impossible to go from a dark flower to a light

flower so start with a light color and then add color from there.

If you want to see a Design Master You Tube video on more

tips and ideas for spraying real flowers click here. 

You can also use Design Master on fake flowers. I needed blue

flowers to use in a Fourth of July arrangement. About the most

real looking fake blue flowers are hydrangeas, in my opinion.

I am trying to reduce my stash of fake flowers, not add to, so

I tried spraying some of my green hydrangeas to get blue.

Michael's has a good selection of colors and you can use a

coupon (regular $8/can). This is Larkspur Blue. 

 This is one of my fluffier (more expensive) green hydrangeas fixing to get sprayed.

This is some less expensive hydrangeas...the individual flowers were pretty spread out

and didn't look very real. I have found that if you gather the flower heads together and bind

them with floral wire, they look bunchier and more real. 

Here are the green hydrangeas that have been sprayed with

the Larkspur Blue paint gathered together in a vase. 

I think they turned out wonderful but for a Fourth of July

arrangement, I realized I actually wanted them darker than that. 

There was a darker blue Design Master color but I had thought

 it would make them too dark...maybe not. 

 To save a trip back to the craft store I decided to try my local hardware store for a darker blue spray paint.  They did have 

normal dark blue spray paint but again I was a chicken.

I thought this deeper blue glass paint might be more translucent.

 This is Krylon Sea Glass spray paint in Cornflower. 

I did not try to completely cover the colors the flowers already 

had but I was pretty happy with the additional darker blue. 

Just for fun I tried it on a pink hydrangea...I liked that too. 

Some of my red fake flowers were looking kinda faded so 

I did get some cheap regular red spray paint to try on them. 

Here is a comparison of before and after with the red paint.

The flower on the left got a light coating of red spray paint

on the petals. I tried to preserve the details in the center. 

Here's how the Fourth of July arrangement came together...

My container is an old wheelbarrow that a neighbor of mine

was throwing away. I tried rehabbing it with paint and glue.
If you would like to see the rehab process click here. 

The elements of the arrangement are the newly blue hydrangeas,

white flowers (as is), red flowers (some refreshed) and greenery.

(Sorry about these fuzzy pictures. My camera lens kept fogging up from the humidity!)

To keep the fake flowers standing up my idea had been to put

spray foam into used plastic garden flower containers. 

The only container with dried spray foam that worked was the

large one with the stable base. The smaller ones did not work

 well. They just flopped over with any weight. Live and learn.

Instead of scattering the three colors of flowers like confetti

in the arrangement, I did more of a color blocking method.

The blue flowers mostly had short stems so they went low

in the arrangement. Then I put the white and the red flowers 

on different sides of the wheelbarrow bed. 

Keep the idea in mind that you can change real and fake 

flower's colors in case the need arises for future holidays,

home decorating or parties. It is easy and fun. 

Here is a good pinnable image if you want to save this
blog post to Pinterest for future reference: