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.