Bouquets

 Remember the plethora of hair flowers? Those came AFTER I made these bouquets. There was a whirlwind of ribbon, hot glue, glitter, and pearls in my kitchen for a couple weeks.

Here is the bridal bouquet

Up close

My favorite little extra detail

The small bridesmaid bouquets

Sorry, there is no tutorial for how to make these. I was busily focused on completing them and kept changing things. I will give you the general instructions though. First, I hit up SAS, walmart, and Hobby Lobby and bought all kinds of different textures and patterns of ribbon in the right color scheme, along with several sizes of pearls, rhinestones, and large acrylic beads.Then I googled a bunch of different fabric flower tutorials. I made lots and lots of flowers, burned off my fingerprints with hot glue (I really need to get better at that).

My first bouquet I glued each flower onto floral wire and wrapped them together using floral tape. It took forever that way and so I REALLY hoped my other idea looked as nice. The wire bouquet is the one near the top of the picture immediately above.

I bought 6in styrofoam balls and cut them in half using a bread knife (my mom wears by an electric knife for styrofoam, but I don't own one). Then I cut a wooden dowel the about 12 in and stabbed it into the center of the hemisphere. *tip* use a ball point pen to make a small hole, then push the dowel in with lots of hot glue. For the bridal bouquet I used a 10in styrofoam ball and cut a 1/4 of it off.

Next I draped white satin over the top and gathered it underneath and taped all around it with masking tape, adding hot glue as necessary (Look at the picture with the bling for a better look at the underside). I then wrapped the whole base with ribbon, white satin for the bridal and polka dot for the bridesmaids.

I pinned the flowers on and rearranged them until they had a nice balance. Then I hot glued them and added the large acrylic beads in between. If I had more time or less on my plate, I would have also added metal flowers from antique broaches for a little extra texture. But overall, I think they turned out lovely. They looked extra nice in the photos and added something unique to the wedding. And since she chose to get married a week before the reception, they still looked great a week later.