My bouquet

Dear Shayne,

Time to show the wedding crafts! I am probably going out of order here, as I should show you our invitations first. But I just have to post my bouquet, because it was my favorite thing I made.

I cannot remember where I originally got the idea to make our flowers, but I had seen this amazing bouquet and these lovely button flowers and also these amazing felt flowers and it got the wheels turning.

For the past year, I have been bookmarking tutorials and making notes about the flowers I would make and then suddenly, it was time to get married!

I made most of the flowers at home and then transported them to Toronto to make the finished bouquet (which, yes, I created at 6am on my wedding day. I'm nuts.) (But you knew that.)

Here are some of the flowers I made...

Button posies:

I had fun collecting buttons for the past year for these flowers. Maybe just a little too much fun. But I am really happy with how they turned out. Love them!

Paper flowers:

These feel a bit like cheaters, because I found those paper flower shapes pre-cut out at Michael's and then I just put them together myself to form flowers (with buttons in the middle, of course!)

Felt flower:

I only ended up making one of these and it went into my Best Woman's bouquet. (Hi, Jenny!) It doesn't look great here, but it looked good with the rest of them. I don't have a photo of her bouquet -- I hope the photographer got one.

Looking back, I wish I had made more felt flowers. They were the most time-consuming and I just ran out of that. Doesn't mean I can't make more now, though!

Ribbon roses:

A time-honored classic, but I especially love that gingham one. I used this tutorial, as I thought it made for especially beautiful roses.

Since we got married at the Hockey Hall of Fame (Yes! I held the Stanley Cup on my wedding day!) I used hockey tape to tape the buds to the stems. Heh.


Ruffle-y:

I actually made several more of these the morning of the wedding, as they were some of the easiest to make and they made good filler. I used wired ribbon and just pulled on the wire along one side to make a ruffle. Then I wrapped them around a stem with a button on the end and voila! Flower!

Poppy-inspired:

I cut circles from organza and then I burned the edges. Finished them off with a button in the middle.

I especially like this maple leaf one:

(Go, Canada!)

Puff balls (AKA "Kaesea's favorite"):

I bought a couple of short lengths of maribou/ostrich feather trim at Joann's, cut it into short pieces, and then sewed each piece into an "O" shape. I then bent a piece of wire around the O and pinched it with pliers. Worked great and added much-needed body to the bouquet.

As an added bonus, Kaesea thinks it's the Best. Cat toy. Ever. (If you'd like to see a video of him playing with it, check out his blog here.)

I used this fantastic twiggy thing that I got in a swap with the ever-so-talented Christine of the blog Little Chrince -- I made her some 1" polka-dotty buttons and she sent me this awesomeness:


And when I put it all together, I had an amazing bouquet!

Unfortunately, the only decent photo I have of it is with our hotel room carpet in the background. But I still think it looks pretty great.

I also made the the boutonnieres and the corsages. But this is now the longest post in history, so I will save those for another day.

love,
kelly