Thursday, March 31, 2011

More shiny!

One of the wedding issues I'd been wrestling with was the idea of flowers. I love real, live flowers, but they are crazy expensive. So, I'd decided I was going to do silk and make my own bouquet... with blue flowers, or maybe sunflowers for a POP! (even though yellow is not a wedding color). I began thinking again, though, how I'd really rather spring for real. I found a vase type of flower arrangement for around $50 that I thought I could make into a good bouquet, and was contemplating that, until I was browsing Etsy and ran across this...

Bouquet by Noaki

Gorgeous, no?? I had not heard of brooch bouquets before. I knew I could never afford one of Noaki's lovely creations. I knew I could do something inspired by this idea on my own, however. It's a pretty straight-forward idea, but I like to see how people do things, so I googled brooch bouquets to see what other information I could find. My favorite tutorial was this one from Fancy Pants Wedding. I liked seeing how they wrapped the wire for each brooch.

I knew mine would not be as full as any of the ones I'd seen thus far, as I hand only a handful of brooches to use. I decided to intersperse them with a bouquet of silk flowers. I'd picked up some bouquets of white roses at Michael's, for my bridesmaids to carry, but some of the people I'd invited now are unable to make it, so I had extra bouquets. I decided to use one of these to augment with the brooches. I used silver florist wire I had on hand to make the stems. Other than that, I used a roll of ribbon from Dollar Tree, some floral tape, and $8 worth of beads from Michael's (I wanted little shiny bits and some blue accents to mix in with the brooches.

Here is what I've come up with...





I wish you could see how shiny it truly is! I love the bling! The brooches I used belonged to my great-grandmother, so this is also going to be a great way to pay tribute to her on my special day. The wire can be snipped and untwisted when the wedding is over, if I wish to get the brooches back to wear. I think I may leave them in the bouquet and display it after the wedding, however :)

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Here comes the DIY bride...

Hi everyone! :)

I haven't posted in awhile... In the last month or so, I've become engaged, my fiance started a new job, we moved into a townhouse, and we're planning a wedding... plus school, and teaching, and I'm trying to find some sort of part to full time job that will have Tom and I on the same schedule (nights). No luck yet, though.

Anyhoo, I've done very little in the creative department... but there is lots of creative wedding stuff underway. We're trying to do the whole wedding for under $3000... so I'm doing the decor myself, we're DJing ourselves (with iTunes), we're doing all the food ourselves, I'm going to make my own cake, etc.

While I did not feel adventurous enough to make my own dress, when I saw the price tags at David's Bridal, I DID decide to make some of my own accessories.


Here's my veil. The one at DB's was pretty similar, but cost $130! I was able to make this for under $10.


Here are some close-ups of the beading -one with and one without flash. I forget what you call the shapes exactly... are the long ones trumpets and the other ones pillows (they're sort of squarish, not round)? Anyhow, I used less than a tube of each from Hobby Lobby, about $1.25 per tube with their half-off sale. Plus the tulle was probably about a dollar, a pack of combs were $1.99, and then the clear thread (bane of my existence) was a little over $2.  It is pretty simple but I am happy with it... It looks shinier in person, and what I really wanted was just some bling, because my dress has no beading or lace whatsoever, so I'm adding details with accessories.

I also made a headband.

Again, just for some bling... the faceted beads have AB coating, so they are quite glimmery in person. The headband at DB was $99, and I'd say this cost me around $10 to make, as well. I got some really thin wire (26 gauge, I believe) and just wove it around the little teeth in the headband, adding a bead in each space. I did two rows together, and then I did a third row on top of those two rows.
I'm trying to get things together for centerpieces right now... which has involved scouring thrift stores for cheap largeish vases... either opaque blue, or milk glass (I <3 milk glass). I only have 3 so far... I need about 14, ideally, so the search continues! I've also been looking for platters at the thrift store. I've found one bigger plate I like... I saw a beautiful limoges china platter this weekend, but it was $13, which is more than I really want to spend. Perhaps I will photog my finds so far and share them in another post.