Brooch Bouquet Update

Wedding crafts

Perhaps you wonder what I've been doing with my spare time lately. Well, I've been mastering the creation of metal daisies.

Here's a photo of some of the 50-or-so metal flowers I've made. Keely's wedding colors are sage green and chocolate brown, so I made my flowers as close as I thought I could to those colors.

The daisies are made from aluminum flashing. Each has two layers of petals and a fancy button at the center.

The tall sprays are made from some tiny brooches I bought on eBay.  I popped the pins off their backs and wired them to stems in groups of three.

And the two little flowers with orange centers and turquoise-beaded edges are buttons.

These will supplement the brooches in the bouquets for Keely's wedding (a smaller brooch bouquet for the maid of honor and a larger one for the bride.)

Last week, Keely wired (attached stems to) the brooches and assembled the smaller bouquet. She said she learned some things while doing it that will be helpful when she makes the larger bouquet. As you can see, the homemade flowers do help fill in the gaps.

I think Keely said that she might still attach some leaves. The stems will be wrapped with ribbon.

These photos don't really do it justice -- the flash was too harsh. It's very pretty. I was really amazed and happy that it looks so good. We're going to make the bride's bouquet this weekend.

I still have to make a few more flowers for the decorations. I will probably post a tutorial later about how to put them together, as I think my method is a big improvement over the instructions I started with. I'll also try to do a tutorial about how Keely wired the brooches and put the bouquet together.

Don't hold your breath, though. The tutorials aren't likely to appear until well after the wedding!

Related: 
Frolics, Larks, and Capers