Fall Flowers || The Social Easel

In this informal livestream, Christie Renee Hawkins walks viewers through buying and arranging a variety of fall flowers from Sam's Club, explaining her creative process and how the arrangements will serve as a still‑life reference for an upcoming "Fall Chapel" painting challenge. She shares personal stories about her family (mom as a florist, husband’s craftsmanship, past work at Bath & Body Works), discusses color theory (purple‑yellow complementarity), gives a cost breakdown of the flowers, and highlights the supportive community of her TRIBE membership where members collaborate and uplift each other. Throughout, she interacts with viewers and her assistant Emma, offering tips on cutting stems, balancing heights, using filler flowers, and treating flower arranging as therapeutic art. The session ends with a call to action for viewers to create their own arrangements and join the September 9‑12 painting challenge.
Chapters
Hey guys, so I am doing something a little different today, but it will be art-inspired. So I got all these really pretty flowers today at Sam's when I was in there shopping after being gone from Canada, and I feel like I had to buy the entire store while I was there for the family of 5. So I've got all these filler flowers. These are like just kind of put in, mixed into the other flowers I got. And these are called— they say they're mini carnations, but have you ever seen carnations that look like that? I think they're so pretty. I'm gonna pull you guys up on my iPad really quick because it's hard for me to see the comments from that far away. So you'll just have to let me know how the viewing is too, because it's kind of weird, hard for me to get an angle that you can see. Now these are some leftover flowers that were still in my last arrangement that I'm gonna add into this arrangement too. And then I have these beautiful sunflowers. So I saw these when I was in Sam's today and they were the prettiest colors. And I have, I don't know if you guys remember seeing this ages ago. This was actually one of my very first videos that I did. Like very, very first. If you go to my YouTube channel, this is the first thing on there. But I have this thing that Cory made me with all these Mason jars in it. It says the Hawkins family. So I'm going to fill these with water. And I'm going to do a big floral arrangement spread out among these. And then I've got two other vases that I may use also, so I don't really have a plan yet, but I'm going to use the flower arrangements that I make and use that as inspiration for a still life. So this is a really good challenge for yourself if you've never done it before. And the thing I love about still lifes is they don't have to look identical. They don't have to look photorealistic or anything like that. It's just giving you inspiration and something to base your idea off of that you didn't have to find online or find somewhere else. So especially like coming up with fall, if you like look around fall decorations, you can set yourself up a little, a little still life with mini pumpkins and candles or vases, whatever you want, and flowers, and use that as your inspiration for painting. So I probably am not going to paint today. Hoping I can get on tomorrow morning and paint. We'll just have to see what, what all I get done, but I'm gonna get the flower arrangements together today, and I'm gonna try to get my video to cooperate with me. I really wish Facebook would fix their stuff though. So that's what I'm working with today. So I'm gonna scoot these over here. What's everybody else working on today? You guys getting any painting done? Or maybe some other crafts? Something creative? I try to do something creative every day, whether it's painting, or flower arranging or whatever. I've been working on some hand lettering lately with the help of my friend Miss Casey Hope, who you guys saw me with in Canada. She teaches lettering. If you've ever wanted to know how to do lettering, she's your girl. So I'm gonna get all these out of the package first. And there may be some kids coming home in the midst of me doing this. If you see people pop in, Sophie decided to go upstairs and chill. I thought she would want to do the live video with me, but she didn't want to today. They're still getting used to school and I think pretty exhausted when they get home. Yeah, I've got a lot of flowers here, so hopefully I can do several arrangements. Have you guys ever done flower arrangements? Is that something you've tried? My mom used to be a florist, so I got some tips from her, but it's really kind of, kind of just like art. You're creating something too. You're just using flowers instead of paint. Hey, Miss Tamara! All of us girls that went to Canada together, we're all having, I think, withdrawals from each other after being used to being together for 5 days in a row. So needless to say, we're chatting a lot on the side. All right, so these are super long stems, all this stuff, so I'm going to be cutting these down. But the main thing I know that I want to get done is this one. Can you guys see that if I put that there? So I'm going to use that as what I work with first, and then we'll see if I have room to make another arrangement. And if you're using this as, like, inspiration to paint from, you can just move things around before you paint it. Tamar said she laughed at the girls who took— I would have totally taken that class in high school, floral arrangement class in high school, and now she's kicking herself. Yes, Christie, I'm talking about you. I'm talking about all of y'all. So I don't know, I can't remember if I told all you guys, but 5 of us got to go. I know I told my Inner Tribe, my membership girls, but 5 of us got to go on stage when we were at Tribe Live with Stu McLaren, who is our membership leader. He's the one who taught us all how to build our businesses, and it was really cool because myself, Tamara, Casey, Sarah, and Heidi all got to go on stage. And it's really cool because the main reason he brought us up there was not just to talk about how successful our memberships were, but that we chose to do it together and to choose to collaborate instead of compete with each other. Because when we all met, you guys know we weren't friends before we did TRIBE. None of us knew any of each other, and we just decided to start working together, and we rely on each other for like everything we do in our businesses, and we've had some awesome collaborations together. A lot of you guys have done some with us. So Heidi and I just did the pumpkin palette. Tamara and I did a challenge that was last spring when she was doing a door hanger. And I was doing the spring truck, but it was just really cool to get to share our story and how we encourage each other because we live in a world where women tend to tear each other down instead of lift each other up. And I hate that it's like that, especially in business, but we've managed to overcome that. And there's 10 of us total who were there, 14 in all in our little group. And it's just so nice to have those people in your life that build you up and are with you when you're having a bad day and there to celebrate with you when something exciting happens. So we were able to go on stage and share all of that. And it was really special. It was a really special moment to get to do that together. And of course I cried. Shocker, I know. If you guys know me, you know I'm a crier. But if you don't have those people in your life, I would highly, highly recommend working on finding them because it's so much more fun to do life with people who build you up. And I think I speak for all of us when I say we're like the backbone for each other to help us in this crazy life, crazy life of business and online sales and, and everything, but it goes much further than that. We're all just friends and most of us are older and you know, it's taken us years to find those people who get us. So anyways, it's just been awesome. Christie's on here. Some of you guys may know Christie. Christie is my web designer, and she's also my community manager inside my membership now. I literally cannot do my business without her, so super thankful for her too. All right, so right now I'm just cutting all the sunflowers, kind of testing them to see how high— look at this one, it has no petals. On the bottom. Kind of testing them to see what height I want them, and I'm going to use that filler to try to get them to stand up a little bit. Hey, Allison. So what's— obviously sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers. What's everybody else's favorites? What do you guys like? I also love tulips. I love when tulips are in season. I love freesia. Freesia has the best smell in the entire world, and it reminds me of when I lived in California and I worked at Bath and Body Works and Pier 1, and I walked to work every day through our park in San Luis Obispo, and freesia was growing and it just filled the entire park, and I just remember that smell. So every time I smell freesia, that's what I think of, is when I lived in California. It smells so good. So let's see, I've got 2 in that and 3. We'll play with this a little bit. These both have 2. So right now, pretty floppy, right? Becky said, "I want to paint a whole vase of baby's breath." That'd be fun. I always add baby's breath in my floral paintings. Tracy said yellow roses and daisies, sunflowers and tulips and peonies. I have a funny story about peonies too. So, so long before I did— well, I did painting when I was younger and in college, but you know, then I had to grow up and get a real job when Cory was going to chiropractic college. So I was a manager at Bath and Body Works in Dallas for years, and I'll never forget, I was working— these might have to go, it's really long. If I cut them short, I'm gonna cut some of the buds off of here. They might have to go in a bigger vase. But, so you know how Bath and Body Works has the White Barn candles? And in Dallas, I worked at the Galleria, and we used to have one whole side that was White Barn and the other side was Bath and Body Works. And I remember helping this older lady came in and she wanted a floral candle, and I asked her, I was telling her all the names of the, of the flower candles that we had, and And I said pink. Now, now I'm so used to saying it the other way. I said peony, and she started laughing and embarrassed me and told me that was not how you say it and that you're supposed to pronounce it peony, which of course I didn't know. So now I think of that every single time I see that flower. These will be pretty once I get enough filler in there. I think I'll be able to get these to stand up. So when you're working with flower arrangements, it's kind of like the same thing I teach when you're building a composition with your painting. You want to have different heights in there, so you don't want all your flowers to end at the same, same spot. You want to have some height. So these tall ones might actually work pretty good to have in there. Hey, Linda! Becky said those sunflowers are mocking her. The sunflowers were Becky's nemesis inside our membership for a long time, but I don't even say it really wasn't that long. Becky was struggling with painting them though, and she just kept at it and kept at it, and now she's awesome at painting sunflowers. So just showed you, sometimes you just gotta stick with it. I got one sad little sunflower here that got damaged. I'm hoping I can get her to stand up in a little bit here. I wonder if I can separate this one. That's one big cluster. We'll probably leave that that way. These green ones are really pretty too, this filler. I thought that color of green would be a nice little pop of color in there. So I'm just kind of guessing, and then I'll kind of cut and play with it a little bit, decide how tall I want them.
I think I want that a little bit shorter.
Alexa, skip song. I'm listening to music right now. You ask her to play your favorite artist and she will find the most random songs to play sometimes. Can you guys still see okay? Kind of? What I'm, what I'm doing here. Starting to get going. Oh, I can cut some of these shorter. Good. That first one I had the— I had like this one. All these stems were connected. So if you were late joining, I'm gonna hold these up. Aren't those so pretty? They say they're mini carnations, but I've never seen them like this, and it was the only one they had. All the other mini carnations that look like the kind that I've always seen, and there was only one bunch of this, of this kind. I would have bought more of them if they would have had more. I just think it's such a pretty flower. I have a nice mess here. So these are regular carnations. That's how they usually look, like the fluffy kind. And then these white ones look completely different than that. It's starting to look pretty here. We're starting to get some a little bit fuller. And these are some of my favorites. I don't remember what these are called, but I love, I love purple flowers. Thank you, Helen. Um, Jane, my husband made that. We have, um, this was like old, um, white picket fence And he's a craftsman. He can make me anything. He's also the one who builds my palettes for me for painting, but he made this for me and measured it to fit the mason jars. I need some of that green down over here. Cut this one a little bit lower. And this is kind of a fun arrangement too. Because I've got the different size mason jars that are stuck in here, so that gives it some height difference too. I know that white does pop. I kind of wish I had a little bit more of it. Well, we've got the baby's breath that I'll be able to add in. See, I need some of this green over here in this other one. I may have to take those pink ones out of there, put them in their own separate vase. This is my sad broken one. It got damaged. I need to prop it up with another flower. All right, I got 2 more green stems here. All right, I'll show you guys how it's starting. That's looking pretty, isn't it? I like it so far. I might pop some of my other sunflowers towards the front a little bit. Now, I usually, if I have a floral arrangement obviously that I know is facing one way, I'm gonna try to get as many of those flowers to face that, that direction. So that's what I'm gonna do with this, especially since I'm gonna use it as inspiration for a painting. I want to see as many flowers as I can in it. Thank you, Gayla and Jan and Lisa. All right, I haven't even added any of the purple in yet, and I've still got a ton of this. Look at all that pink. We may have— I may have enough to do a separate little vase. And this baby's breath lasts forever. This really just makes me want to go back to the store and buy more flowers now so I can fill it. This is a lot of baby's breath. Look how much I got. That's a lot. I don't know that I'll be able to fit all that in there. Start cutting some of this purple. Debbie, you're right, definitely. Debbie said flower arranging is like therapy for me. I think doing anything creative is therapeutic, because when you're doing something like this, it's hard to still worry about and stress about all the other stuff. You're focused on what you're doing and just kind of having fun with it and seeing what happens. And I love that, especially with flower arranging. There's really— it's hard to mess it up. You are just kind of having fun and seeing what happens. And if you do something and you don't like it, you can change it. And I love the purple and the yellow together. Can anyone tell me why we are so drawn to purple and yellow together? It's a color wheel question. Tuck some of that in there. Thank you, Theresa and Debbie and Sharon. Yeah, I may have enough on the front of this that I might be able to take some of these sunflowers out and do another little, another little vase. Need some more pink over here. Debbie, right, she said the flowers will speak to you. I agree. Jane got it. They are opposites on the color wheel. So whenever you see purple and yellow together, They complement each other, so naturally we're drawn to it. Some of my favorite color combinations for flowers— I love purple, yellow, and red together, and this pink is really close to that. I just love that you can find art in anything if you're willing to look for it. And for those of you that don't know, I used to do cakes and cookies. That was another form of art for me. My mom still decorates cookies, so I was raised doing that. I could make anything out of frosting on a cake. And it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of hard work too. All right, what are we thinking here? I'm gonna turn this a little bit, and then I'll turn it back for you guys to see. Tuck some of this in. I think I want some taller pink ones over here. A little bit taller.
Let's see.
So I'm gonna try to get— oh, that's starting to look good. I'm gonna try to get the height up higher in the middle here. Is this entertaining to watch it kind of come together? Sharon said, so when you arrange a rectangular arrangement, you don't do a triangle. Honestly, I just, I just play with it until I like it. I don't have like a system necessarily, like put in place. I just kind of— kind of create as I'm going. Someone's home. M, is that you?
I'm doing a video, just so you know. I'm so hungry.
There's a lot of groceries on the table. Don't knock the camera. Are they all fake? These are all real. I bought them at Sam's today. Aren't they pretty? I know. How did it stay? Oh, you put water? No, no, she was— I didn't see the water. I was like, how are they staying like that? Thank you, Sharon. I think we all have it in us. I think we just don't allow ourselves to play enough and get creative enough, I think we'll be surprised what we're capable of. Hey, Emma, will you do me a favor? There's that mason jar in there with those fake flowers in it. You see it? Will you grab it for me, please? So I'm changing— I don't like these. These were leftover from another flower arrangement that I had. I'm taking those out. I'm gonna put them in this— we're gonna make a separate little mason jar. Thank you. We're gonna make a separate little vase of flowers here. I could do this all day. Kathy, I bought them at Sam's. I think they have some of the best flowers there.
Can I talk?
Yes. Baby's breath is all together here.
Why? This one's still pretty.
Do what?
This one's still pretty.
How's the height looking? I think I can go a little bit more. I think I need to make some of these a little longer. All right, I'm taking these extras out of here. They're getting in my way. And I kind of play with like the baby's breath and kind of tuck it around some of the other flowers. You can pull some in front, so it'll kind of get wrapped up in— I need this sunflower to stand up here on that edge. I'm trying to look in the camera so I can kind of see what you guys are seeing and where I want to add more. I like these tall ones in the back. This one needs to be a little bit shorter. Kathy said, how much did you spend for the arrangement? So the filler flowers, that's the purple, the green, and the white, they were $4 apiece. So $12 on that. The sunflowers were only $8, so that's $20. And then the carnations were $9, so $29. Which I don't think is bad for everything that you get. And then I'm gonna be able to make a separate arrangement with it too. I love these. Look, these are carnations. Have you ever seen any like that? Oh, a broken one. Here you go. All right, I'm gonna turn this so I can look at it, see what you guys see, see where I want to prop some things up. Kathy, I have no idea how long they'll last. However long— I mean, some flowers all last different different amounts of time. Those are pretty. Don't drop them on the floor just in case they're poisonous to the dogs or you. Thank you, Jane.
It's very hot in here.
You can turn the air down. All right, so, um, fluffing up some of my sunflowers here in the middle, just so they're not all coming out right at the same spot. I think we'll have a taller piece. They are real, yes. I was just too inspired when I went there. I had to buy them. Some crazy, crazy tall baby's breath here. Turn that back so you guys can see. This kind of reminds me of my country flower box that I painted my palette knife flowers. I stuck a sunflower and not a vase here. All right, we have some more people coming home, so be ready for some noise. What do you guys think? Should I be done with this one? I want this one out because it doesn't match. I've got to add more. I think I'm gonna add— this last little vase over here is pretty empty and puny, so I'm gonna add a little bit more to this. Maybe change some of the— yeah, I think so too. If you went to a floral shop and bought an arrangement like this, it'd be way more than $29. Slide this pink in here. These sunflowers are just a little droopy over on this side. This one stands up a little bit more. I may switch that out.
Hi, honey.
Now the problem with the little mason jars is you don't have as much wiggle room to put your flowers in there. I think I'm gonna add a little bit—
oh, that one's broken.
Never mind, that's some broken baby's breath. Okay, I think I'm gonna add a little bit more pink over here, and then I think I'll be about done with this one. That is pretty. Maybe a little more purple. I don't think I have enough purple in there. What do you think, Sophie? I think it looks really good. You think I should put a little more purple up here? Turn that so you guys can see.
Let's see.
Yeah, it just needs to marinate. No, it needs to. I was waiting for my dad to text me back. It's in our text, but he didn't say how many tablespoons of what. All right, what do you guys think? Should I be done with this one? Move this a little closer So you guys can see here, and then we're going to take some of my leftover ones and make a smaller arrangement with a mason jar. All right, got a crazy baby's breath here that's leaning over sideways. I like this green in here too. And after you do a floral arrangement, you can even take your flowers and just kind of lift them up and kind of move them around too if you need to fluff it a little. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so we're going to slide that over here and we're going to do one in a mason jar and then I'll probably tie like some burlap string around it or something. So these— I've got a couple sunflowers left. This is going to be a faster one. Very country style. I'm going to use these to kind of lift up. Yeah, that white one, that white one is all on its own, isn't it? There's a couple more white ones in there. They got tucked in. I may pull a couple of those out. I got my droopy sunflowers here. We'll use some of these other ones to get it propped up.
Oh, enough to come off.
Get those lifted up a little bit. I'm going to put a little purple underneath there. So hopefully tomorrow morning I'll have time to jump on and paint some of these with you guys. And if you haven't seen already the Fall Chapel, one of my popular fall paintings— let's see if you guys can see this up here. I've got it hanging on my wall. See that Fall Chapel in the background? If you missed it, we are doing a— I call them painting challenges because it If you haven't painted before, my challenge is for you to try it. If you have, then you can join just because you love the painting. But registration is open for that, and that challenge starts on September 9th, and we'll be closing registration for on the 7th so I can get everyone into the group. And get everyone organized. You'll learn how to do— how to build a pallet board if you haven't already. And then I teach the painting step by step over the span of 4 days. So we'll break the painting down into 4 mini lessons. So each lesson will be like 20-25 minutes each day. For 4 days, so it'll run from the 9th through the 12th. And then we'll finish up and you'll have yourself a fall chapel painting. This one's a little tighter. I can't get this one sunflower. I'm not gonna let it die. I'm gonna get it to stick in here. Maybe if I prop it up in the middle of these flowers here. All right, so there's just a quick, quick little bundle of flowers with some of our extras. Baby's breath out of the way just a little bit. Alright, so those are my two floral arrangements for the day, and then I'm gonna use these as inspiration for painting. So if you haven't painted with me before, I have a really loose kind of freestyle, so it'll probably be pretty abstract. Probably going to use palette knife with it. So we'll see. I haven't decided yet, but we'll be working on that either tomorrow, or if I don't have time to get to it tomorrow, it'll be next week. So I hope you guys had fun watching me do my flower arrangements today. So my challenge to you for this is to get yourself some flowers and set up your own little still life that you can paint from too.
All right, talk to you guys later.
Bye.










