Beaded Flower Encyclopedia

Finishing Techniques for Beaded Flower Stems

Raffia are leaf fibers from the raffia palm tree grown in Africa and Madagascar and Central and South America. The leaves of the palm fronds are opened, revealing the natural raffia fiber. It is artificially colored and used for making baskets and mats. More commonly you may have seen it use for decorating packages or in floral displays.

Wraphia is a synthetic nylon version of raffia and is used for decorating giftwrap. I found some at my local Walgreens Drugstore in the giftwrap aisle.

To use the wraphia, soak it in water for a few minutes so it's not so brittle. When you take it out of the water, run it between two fingers to squeeze out the excess water. Then wrap as you would with floral tape. In my sample, I first covered the wire with floral tape and then put the wraphia on top of that. When it dried I could see that I hadn't completely covered the floral tape so that's something to watch out for.

The varigated wraphia was fun to use. I spiraled the top of the wire so it can be used as part of a floral display.