Handmade Bouquets

photos by Ben Sheriff Photography - www. bensheriffphotography.com

So for the wedding I wanted to make my own bouquets. There were lots of reasons, but the main one was because I wanted to make them a year in advance, put them in a box and pull them out the day of the wedding - ready and gorgeous to go. It worked!

They weren't all the difficult to create. They did cost a little bit, but not anymore than flowers would have and, again, my main reason was convenience. I didn't want to worry about storage or transportation and this allowed me to relax and enjoy the day. Plus, they turned out so unique.

Materials: Beads, buttons, wire, glue, ribbon, feathers, and any other details or accents to make it pop.

1. Gather your materials & sort your buttons. I wanted my bouquets to be turquoise and brown so I spent a few weeks thrift store shopping for buttons of varying hues. This turned out more difficult than expected but I lucked out when one of the ladies from the sewing club gifted me with bags and bags of buttons. B helped and in a couple of hours we had all the buttons sorted. This chip platter was great to use as a sorting plate.

2. Make some flowers. I still wanted my bouquet to have flowers, but just the kind that never wilt. I am an avid scrapbooker so I went to the craft store and bought some paper flowers. Then using the wire and a button I threaded the center and created lots and lots of flowers.

3. Add more beads. There are so many amzing beads and button in the world. I just couldn't include enough. I decided to string beads and buttons together to make more additions to the bouquet. I used them at the base of feathers and wrapped them around barley and wheat. If I could add a bead - I did. 

4. Sort, mix & match.  I gathered all the items I had created and began sorting them into 8 piles for 8 bouquets. I checked that each bouquet had paper flowers, buttons & beads on wire, feathers, barley and wheat. Then I added more feathers, plastic leaves or plastic baby's breath to make the bouquets a bit bigger. I mixed and matched until I liked the pairings. I added peacock feathers to mine to make it different from the others. Finally, I wrapped them all with matching brown and turquoise ribbons. A dab of glue and they were done.