Toss bouquet

Last bouquet post, I promise. I made this fabric bouquet over the weekend for my sister to do the traditional bouquet toss at the wedding reception. She had given me one of her old bridesmaid's outfits a few years ago to make use of the fabric and now seemed the perfect time to use it. 

Butterflies are very significant to my sister and her fiance, so it felt right to include one on this bouquet. It is made from card and was recycled from a birthday party invitation to Aimee. Although the photo suggests otherwise, the colours of the butterfly complement the tones of the bouquet

I used some of the buttons from the bodice to place in the centre of a couple of flowers and wrapped the stem with the same vintage lace that is used on the junior flower girl bouquets. I like that there is a touch of sentimental value to the bouquet in using parts of the dress that my sister wore and the lace given to me by our grandmother.

It is really quite a deceptively heavy bouquet, and it survived a couple of practice runs at throwing it (think caber-tossing, that should give you an idea of the finesse of the throws), so it should hopefully last the one final important toss - I wonder who will catch it?

Artificial bouquets

My sister has a vintage theme in mind for her wedding, although I think the final, overall look will be quite eclectic, as much of the items are being collected from a number of different places, with mismatched china, table decorations, seating and the like. It should make for some really pretty photos. She is quite relaxed about what flowergirl dresses are worn which is helpful as the entire bridal party is spread right across the North Island. With such a broad age range to consider, there is little chance of each girl agreeing to a specific style or colour, but the aim is to be as complementary as distance and budget allows.

To help keep the look cohesive, I have been making flower girl posies using a very neutral palette for the artificial flowers. I experimented with different fabric types to see what would work best for the flowers I had in mind. In my fabric stash was eight metres of white polyester lining, purchased two or three years ago for $1/metre when I stumbled upon an amazing pop-up fabric sale held in a vacant office space in Wellington. I also had some off-white satin lining, as well as a few metres of cream crepe de chine and some beige polyester fabric, so I was in no danger of running out of a particular fabric to finish each posy. This was important given there were eight posies to make.

I did expect that it would take a while to make each posy, but little did I know that I would still be working on them two weeks after I started. My glue gun and I are great mates now and the blistered skin on my fingers is starting to heal. I thought you might like to see how it all turned out.

There are little girls, tweens and a teenager in the bridal party so I ran an idea past my sister to keep the posies age-appropriate and she really liked the concept. The junior flower girls are between 2-5 years old. Speaking from experience, a 2 year old cannot hold a bouquet in front of their body for very long, so I made some flower wands for each girl to hold. They are very lightweight and designed to be held up and away from the body so as not to hide their faces as they walk down the aisle. The individual flowers are very time-consuming to make but worth the effort.

I followed a tutorial on the internet and I really wanted to say they look like peonies but that would flatter their real form. They still give a lovely effect though. From a distance, they look like candy floss or the underskirt of a full petticoat. The ribbon is some vintage lace that belonged to my grandmother. I used the same white lining to wrap around the wooden dowel.

For the older flower girls, who are aged from 7-13, small posies have been made using the same white flowers, some artificial roses and large silky petal flowers. No chance of getting hayfever with these babies.

With eight posies completed, I have turned my attention to making a wrist corsage for my niece who has cerebral palsy. I can't access my Pinterest account at the moment and I really wanted to spend some time there looking for some ideas *sigh*. Would you please do me a favour and let me know if you can see my Pinterest boards when you click on my sidebar? All I get is an error message and I can't pin anything new. I forged ahead anyway and you can see how it is taking shape on my Instagram page, if you like.

It is such a miserable day here and I would have loved to have taken some outdoor photos with these bouquets, so I am sorry, you will have to settle for some poxy indoor snaps instead.

Skinny marinky linky link with Leonie at Show at Tell this week.

You say boutonnieres

I say buttonholes. You say tomayto, I say tomato. You say bouquet, I say bucket - wait a minute...

Instead of having bridesmaids and groomsmen, my sister has opted to have all of her nieces and nephews form the bridal party instead. It's a lovely idea, but with nine flowergirls and four pageboys ranging in ages from 2-13, it makes for a rather large group to cater for their bouquets and buttonholes.

Obviously, a group of this size impacts on my sister's wedding budget, but she insists upon having all of them in the bridal party, so we have been looking at ways to reduce costs by using alternatives to fresh flowers. With her blessing, the challenge for me has been to make something for each niece and nephew that looks passable and doesn't cost too much - without it looking like it didn't cost much.

Because not everyone has settled upon colours and styles for the pageboys and flower girls' outfits, it seemed logical to keep the flowers fairly neutral, which brings me to my latest project.

A couple of nights ago, I spent an hour making these buttonholes. They were surprisingly quick to put together. I made an extra one for our little baby nephew to wear, even though he may not be in the official bridal party, and I am debating making some extras anyway in case of buttonhole malfunctions on the day. You never know, it is only fabric glue holding these babies together.

To make the roses, I used the same technique to make the crepe paper flowers, but this time I dabbed some fabric glue around intermittently to keep the 'petals' in place. Then I wound some charcoal yarn around the stem and glued it in place with a small safety pin inserted in the back. Hopefully the charcoal will be unobtrusive on their suit lapels, but I am considering redoing them in lighter twine in case it's a hot day and the boys end up wearing white shirts instead of jackets or waistcoats.

It was not as fiddly as I thought to make these buttonholes and I really enjoyed the process. I'm already looking ahead to the next project on my list, the flowergirl posies. Something tells me they won't be as quick to make.

Joining in for Show and Tell again this week. Check it out for more creative inspiration.

Crepe paper pomanders

Part of the reason that I set up a new blog was to document the build-up to my sister's wedding.  She is getting married in a couple of months and I am so excited for her. Who doesn't love weddings? Most of the critical elements have already been taken care of, so now it is down to finalising all the small details that help to personalise the day. I think this is the part that is the most fun aspect of planning a wedding.

My sister is trying to keep to a modest budget and so it calls for some creative thinking. We have been working on a few bits and pieces for her special day, and I have created a Pinterest account to collate ideas. Cripes, a girl could get lost in there! And depressed. Anyway, musn't dwell on the things we could never afford in a bazillion years and focus on the parts we can make ourselves.

I was asked to make some decorations for the church pews. Although nothing beats fresh flowers in a church, in my opinion, there are still some equally lovely cost-effective alternatives to help make the venue look bridal and beautiful.  Initially, she requested tissue paper pompoms, but as soon as I started to look online at other church pew paper decorations, I discovered pomanders. While pompoms are lovely too, white rose pomanders instantly scream "wedding". I set about making one for my sister using white crepe paper and she loved it the moment she saw it.

Here is the video tutorial that I referred to if you would like to make these yourself. I used pins to secure the roses to a polystyrene ball. It would have looked fine without further embellishment, but I experimented with a few options to show my sister, as she is a girl who loves sparkly things. She opted for self-adhesive rhinestones which were applied to the heads of the pins. The balls sparkle when the light catches them and they do look quite elegant. I am looking forward to seeing them on the church pews. For now, they are being safely stored away from interested little people and their curious little hands.

I'm joining in with Leonie and fellow creatives at Show and Tell this week.