So here it is, the DIY How-To for making your own Wedding Brooch Bouquet. This is not a DIY project you will want to take on if you are a Bride planning a wedding in a few months, this one takes time but it is well worth it. I was planning my wedding for a year and a half and this DIY was on the go throughout, it starts with getting together the materials you will be using and you will want to take some time searching for your brooches. You could search for brooches based on colour, theme, flowers, or a compilation of brooches that mean something to you and your future hubby. Mine was a little of it all and I included brooches matching my green and brown colour scheme, flowers, and some meaningful brooches such as brooches from our grandmothers, a trinket with Greg's first baby picture from the hospital, a whale, and vintage pieces. The cost of materials for my brooch bouquet was around $85 (the majority of this was for the brooches that I bought). If you check out Etsy, sellers are selling brooch bouquets for between $65-1,850... with a common price being around $500. So needless to say, you can save yourself a lot of money by making it yourself. Below is your DIY How-To, if you have been considering making your own I would highly recommend it, I am so glad I have such a meaningful piece of my wedding that will be long lasting and cherish... unlike a dried, brittle version of a flower bouquet that will eventually get trashed. Happy DIYing, send me your pictures of your DIY Brooch Bouquet to greg_n_bris_wedding@hotmail.com and I will display them on this blog to inspire other brides-to-be!
Save Your Money
and DIY - Brooch Bouquet
List of Materials:
- 50-75 New and Vintage Brooches, Earrings and Buttons
(amount depends on sizes of each) Search on www.ebay.com
for bulk listings, www.etsy.com for Vintage
and Homemade, Yard Sales, Flea Markets and Antique Stores, you can even find
some in Dollar Stores.
- Floral Wire
- Wooden Skewers
- Floral Tape
- Pipe Cleaners
- 3 inch and 2 inch Fabric Ribbon (colour of your choice)
- Corsage Pearl Head Push Pins (pack of at least 30)
- 3 or 4 inch
Styrofoam Ball (depending on how big you want the bouquet)
- Strong Thick Tape (duct tape, masking tape, packing tape)
- 26 Gage Crafting Wire (brown or green) Michaels
- Floral Filler - such as wire with gems attached
- Metal snips (cutters)
Instructions:
This DIY was inspired by the gorgeous Vintage Brooch
Bouquets displayed on the Internet, such as these ones featured on Ruffled http://ruffledblog.com/2010/01/vintage-brooch-bouquets/.
It was difficult finding detailed instructions and like many others it was a
DIY you just had to try to figure out on your own. Well worry no more because
here it is, there may be others out there but this one has results that show it
works. This DIY will cost you between $100 and $200 depending on how many
brooches you purchase and how much you spend on each brooch. If you are lucky you might be able to have all of your brooches given to you by family and friends, spread the word and let them know you are looking for brooches. You could even incorporate it as part of your Bridal Shower and as everyone to bring a brooch to pass on :)
Here are some tips on keeping the costs down and searching for the brooches because this will be your starting point. This is one of the most fun parts because you will get to choose the brooches you like and some that might have meaning for you. It is very easy so spend hours searching through the variety of brooches you can find online. Before you get started set a budget on how much you are willing to pay for each brooch, remember you will be purchasing 50-75 of them depending on size so look for deals, bulk listings, and combined shipping. This will probably be the most time consuming part so give yourself several months to search for the perfect brooches.
ETSY (www.etsy.com): Click on all items in a search and type in
"brooch" or specific brooches you are looking for, such as
"silver brooch", "brown brooch", and "green brooch",
“flower brooch”, “pearl brooch” etc. Type in $0-$6 price range to keep the cost
down, also look for sellers who will do combined shipping.
EBAY (www.ebay.com or www.ebay.ca): Very
similar to ETSY, make sure you set a price limit per brooch so you don't go
crazy with the cost. Also a little trick, type in "Brooch Lot" you
will find sellers putting together up to 100 or more random brooches in one
listing and selling them all together as a lot.
Dollar
Stores: Believe it or not in some dollar stores you can find brooches. They are
back in style these days and you can find them in the jewelry section of your
local dollar store.
Wal-Mart: Look
in the jewelry section at Wal-Mart, you can find some really cute brooches there
too; most of them are from the GEORGE collection.
Kijiji (www.kijiji.com or www.kijiji.ca : As with
the other online searches type in what you are looking for in a search and
voila. Just make sure you are looking in the area closest to you because it is
likely you will have to go pick up the items.
Garage
Sales: If you are planning for a wedding next year get out early in the season
and start hitting up local garage sales. The early bird gets the worm!
Flea
Markets, Retro Store, Second Hand Stores and Antique Stores: Spend some of your
Saturdays on the hunt for cheap finds.
Family and
Friands: Put the word out to family and friends about what your next DIY project
is and ask your female family members and friends to look in their drawers to
see what they can find. It also helps to have extra eyes to spot out some good
finds. Having pieces that used to be cherished by your family also adds a
special touch to your bouquet.
Michael's
Craft Store (www.michaels.com): You can
find all kinds of inspirational things in this store to add as much bling and pizzazz
to this project as you want.
Once you
have all of your brooches collected start picking up the other materials
required. For one stop shopping you can get all of the items at Michael’s (or a
local craft store, you might also want to try some dollar stores). Putting the
bouquet together will take you quite a bit of time, so you will probably want
to spend it over several evenings and take breaks in between so you don’t loose
the enjoyment. After making the bouquet you will appreciate others who have
made them and it is no wonder why those selling them pre-made are charging so much.
Here we go:
Outside
brooches that will be the stems you see sticking out at the bottom
1. Take each
individual brooch and secure a medium gage craft wire (floral wire) around the
pin latch wrapping it through several times and extending the wire down 10-12
inches.
2. Take pipe
cleaners (from the dollar store for $1 bag of 20 or more) and wrap 1 pipe
cleaner down around the secured wire (this will give some extra thickness to
the wire and you will see why in the next step).
3. Take
green floral tape (from Michael’s or a floral store) and wrap this from the top
of your attached wire all the way to the bottom of your 10-12 inch piece. This
will make it look like a flower stem and the pipe cleaner will add dimension
making it more realistic. If you want to take the extra time and effort, cut
leaf shapes out of the left over florist tape and attach it to the underside of
the brooch covering up the pin and wire attached.
Repeat these
steps for approximately 10 – 12 brooches and set them aside.
Brooch Bouquet Foundation:
1. Take your
Styrofoam ball and wrap the floral wire around it randomly creating what looks
like a cage. Make sure to occasionally trim the wire and twist the end around
another loop of wire to secure it because once you give a little slack to the
tightly wrapped wire the whole thing will unravel. You may want a friend or
your fiancé to help you with this part to keep the wire in place until you have
enough that it will stay in place because of the over lapping. Wrap the ball
enough so you are seeing spaces between the wires, no bigger than 2 inches.
This will be the foundation to what everything else will be attached to.
2. Take your 2-inch fabric and cut it into
pieces long enough to loop it (fold it) together to make pieces with two and three
folds. Twist a piece of floral wire around the base securing the fabric to
remain folded, leave the ends of the wire sticking out so you can use them to
attach to the wire wrapped Styrofoam ball. Repeat this enough times to make
approximately 20 gathered pieces of fabric.
3. Take the
individual gathered pieces of fabric and start randomly attaching them all over
the top two thirds of the ball. This will be filler and a means of attaching
some brooches so you won’t see the Styrofoam ball underneath.
Adding the Brooches:
1. This
takes some planning and an eye for how the different sizes and shapes of
brooches fit together. Start by taking
your larger brooches to cover some space and begin by attaching them to the
fabric pieces as well as the wire wrapped around the Styrofoam ball, as you
would to your coat jacket using the pin clasp attached. For the larger brooches
try to put the pin through two pieces of fabric to secure pieces together.
Lightly pull the fabric pieces out so some sticks out through the brooches.
Continue attaching brooches in a layering affect over the space until you can
no longer see large uncovered spaces, it is okay if you see the fabric
underneath. The more brooches you fill in the more you can adjust the brooches
with one another and this secures everything in its spot so they won’t move
around. You may have to move pieces around and do some adjusting to get it just
right.
2. Take your
10-12 brooches that you created stems for. Now start attaching these brooches
around the outside of the brooch ball. You can use other brooches to also
secure the stem in place around the ball. Bend the stems around the ball and
down to the bottom. Put all the stems together and secure them at the base of
the ball by wrapping some floral wire around them. Pull the remaining stems
straight down.
3. Take your
smaller brooches, buttons and earring and set them aside. Cut a 7-10 inch piece
of the 26 - gage crafting wire and double or triple it up and twist it together
to make a thicker twisted wire. Attach these pieces of wire around the smaller
brooches, and then stick them in amongst the brooches on the Styrofoam ball to
give dimension to the bouquet adding height. Do the same with any buttons, and
clip on earrings you may have. You can add other hook earrings by sticking them
through the pieces of fabric and putting the backing on them and letting them
dangle down.
4. You can
also add any floral filler at this stage to add some extra detail or fill in
gaps. Keep
repeating these steps until you get the fullness and shape you want.
Adding Ribbon:
1. Take your
3-inch wide ribbon and attach one end with a corsage pin to the base of the
ball just under where your brooches stop. Begin making loops and attaching them
with pins all the way around the ball to the other side.
Making the Handle:
1. Take
wooden skewers and begin sticking them into the base of the ball about half way
in. As you add them in you can move the stems around to fit in amongst the
skewers. Keep adding them at slight angles and different directs than one
another so you don’t create one spot where there is a gaping hole in the ball
you want them evenly dispersed to give it stability when you hold it. Once the
brooches are on you will realize how heavy this can be so you will want a
sturdy handle. Do this until you have about 12-15 skewers in place. Push some
of the skewers in so they are higher then the stems you created.
2. Decide
how far down you want the ribbon to go that will cover the handle. Allowing for
two to 3 inches of the stems to show works well. Of the skewers that fall in
that range that will be showing at the bottom you will want to cover them in
floral take by wrapping it around the skewer as you did for the stems.
3. Once that
is all finished have your friend or fiancé hold the bouquet sturdy for you and
start taping the skewers together to make a secure solid handle. You will want
to start about 2 inches from the top and wrap the tape around to the spot where
the ribbon will cover.
4. Take the
3 inch ribbon you have chosen for the handle and pin one end with a corsage pin
up into the Styrofoam base. Begin wrapping the ribbon around the handle
diagonally until you get to the bottom without covering the stems. Secure that
end in place with another corsage pin. To tidy up the end you can choose to
wrap the 26 –gage wire around the bottom to finish off the look. Then add any additional decoration to it as
you wish (exp. a bow, crystals, shells, feathers, pearls, or a leftover brooch).
5. To make
the base of the Styrofoam ball fuller and to fill in any gaps repeat step 1
from the Adding the ribbon section. You can also use the pearl head corsage
pins to hold down any loose fabric or to fin brooches in tighter. They add to
the whole look by adding a vintage feel with the pearls.
6. Add any other final touches to it as you see fit. Voila!
This is a
DIY project that you will never forget (both for it's frustrations along the way and joys!) and the great thing about it is you can
use it as decoration in your home after the wedding by placing it in a vase or
use it as a heirloom piece and pass it down to your little sister or daughter
when she gets married!
Some more links to help you in the process:
Weddingbee <------------------------- (I posted my DIY tips on this blog)
Ruffled <------------------------------- (Where I first got my inspiration!)
Fancy Pants Weddings <----------- (Just found this one...)
Brooch Bouquets TM <------------- (Original creator of the brooch bouquet)
Brooch Bouquets Etsy Shop
