Always in Bloom

You know what's pretty? Flowers. You know what is awesome? Handmade fabric flowers.

Case in point: 

What you have here is the product of a random idea, that turned in to a few google searches, that then became the center of many hours of flower making. In the end, it came out to be one of the most fabulous things I have ever seen. 

I am a paper girl, mostly. Typically, my craftiness centers around my Cricut or Silhouette Cameo. One day I happened to see a wedding bouquet that was made of paper. It was super cute, but it was very "spring-like" and I think that almost any paper bouquet would have felt the same. Then I had an idea: "I wonder what a fabric bouquet would look like? Enter Google. 

I fell in love with this bouquet and enlisted the fabric master: mom. She fell in love. We started making flowers. And more flowers. Then we started arranging them with pins on a Styrofoam ball. Decided we didn't like a bunch of the flowers we made and set those aside. Made more flowers. I promise you that the result is absolutely worth it, but this project is not for the faint of heart. It is not a fast process, and the glue gun can be vicious! This flower-making session seemed to last forever...

In the end, my bouquet ended up with just ivory and purple. We used some velvet ribbon to make some embellishing flairs. There are a few buttons and garnishments in some of the flowers.

I had seen different versions of stems: a whisk, a solid piece of wood turned on a lathe, etc. I chose wooden dowels which were already green to actually resemble the stems. We covered the plastic bouquet holder in lace and then hot glued the ball to the holder. 

Once we felt comfortable with the mix of flowers we started gluing. My mom has this really awesome old school hot glue gun. Ya know, the ones that actually work and aren't crappy. Unfortunately, that means it gets really hot and isn't nice to the skin, but it works so good! Along with my bouquet we (mostly she) also made my Matron of honors, mother's corsages, all the men's boutineers.

Here's a few shots that our fabulous photographer at Bee Mine Photography took that highlight the flowers. Be sure to check out http://beeminephoto.blogspot.com/

 Fabulous. Gorgeous. Priceless.