Thursday, July 30, 2009

diy cascade bouquet

Paging though my floral book, I fell in love with this cascading bouquet, and decided to try making my own. My inspiration:

Materials:

  • Soft Touch Orchid Stems. (4 of them, there are 7 blooms to a stem)
  • Silk Dogwood Flowers
  • Bouquet Holder from Michael's
  • Floral Wire
  • Brown Floral Tape
  • Glue Sticks (For glue gun)
  • Brown Wired Ribbon
  • Rose Leaves or some other such greenery if you so desire.

Tools:

  • Scissors
  • Hot Glue Gun

Assembly:

1. Pulling individual flowers off the stem, begin creating the long trails of orchids. One will be extra long (10 blooms), and two will be slightly shorter (5 or 6 blooms). Below shows how I went about the process. For me, I alternated between orchids and dogwood flowers, because they were fake flowers, I began really with step 3 in the first image. Also, each trail of orchids ended with two buds from the tip of the orchid stem.

Flowers on the stem:

2. Begin adding orchid blooms to your bouquet holder. Once it's in the place you want, secure it with your hot glue gun. Also fill in with sprays of Dogwood and silk Rose Leaves.

3. Wire your orchid trails to the bottom of the bouquet holder frame, longest piece in the center and two shorter pieces on either side.

4. Manipulate the wired blooms so they point in the direction you desire. (Ideally outwards so your bouquet has the full effect.)

5. Wrap your bouquet holder in ribbon color of your choice, and secure it using your hot glue gun. Play with ribbon and wrapping style until you get the effect you desire.

And behold! The finished effect!

If you're making this in advance, be sure to cover with a plastic bag and keep it away from heat to make sure it doesn't warp or become dusty.

If you're worried about how fake flowers might appear in pro pictures... here's a couple more from the actual day.