Finder & Maker

Step by Step DIY Ribbon Bridal Bouquet

Is your friend (whom you love way so much) getting married to a pretty cool guy? Yeah? Well that is pretty neat!

You cannot let your super beautiful, very fun friend walk down the aisle (at her rehearsal) with a paper plate with some flimsy ribbons glued onto it, that just will not do!

Why not create a keepsake that she can enjoy for years to come? I am glad I have convinced you.

Here is how to do it. Firstly you will need the following:

Materials Needed:

Ribbons from Showers/ Bachelorette Party/ Engagement Partys

Wire (Floral craft)

A hot glue gun and lots of hot glue sticks

Needle and thread

Styrofoam ball (or make your own)

Masking tape

A pencil or pen (not a good one)

Beads/ Vintage Jewelry and or Rhinestones Brooches (mine are from OSOFANCY on Etsy)

Small amount of cloth (any sort. but in a light color)

Might Help (but not absolutely necessary)

A sewing machine (some of the flower tutorials require a sewing machine.)

Fabric glue

Embroidery thread and needles

Netting (helps give a romantic fill in)

Possible helpful information:I worked in assembly line fashion. I created all of my ribbon flowers (over several days) and then attached pins to all of the them. Then I applied the hot glue to the backs of the flowers and pushed the pin into the base, and then I edited my embellishments, then attached the embellishments. Things ran smoothly in this fashion.

Please note that this project took well over 18 hours to complete, but that is because I made all of the flowers by hand and used lots of different flower tutorials. I am guessing its possible to complete this project if you have the flowers pre-made in just a few hours.

Step 1:

Making the flowers
Collect ribbons and bow from showers and engagement parties. I collected nearly everything from tags to tissue paper (I will explain why later, I promise.)

Okay once you have your ribbons go ahead and begin to explore the vast and deep Internet caverns of ribbon flower tutorials. There are tons of tutorials on how to make flowers out of all sorts of ribbons here are some of my favorites:

Cut Out and Keep, Pintrest and Craftgawlkers are all great resource for creating flower tutorials. Just type "flowers out of ribbons" or something similar.

A large portion of my flowers were created using the below tutorial by Maize Hutton found on Cut out and Keep: http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/frayed-flower

As a side note, lets say there are several showers, and after the first shower you notice a theme in the color of ribbons you have collected. You can send out an email to the bridal party or close mutual friends that you are planning a project with the ribbons from the remaining showers/ bachelorette party and if they are able it would be awesome if they stick with ribbons in the color you want the bouquet to be. (Lets admit this step is sort of crazy so feel free to skip it. I did send out one such email and I tell you it worked really well! Folks love being a part of things.)

Step 2:

Making the the Base (If you decided to use a Styrofoam ball you can skip this part) Depending on the size of bouquet you are aiming for either purchase a Styrofoam ball (Craft store/ Joann’s/ Micheal's/ Salvation Army Thrift usually has some in the craft area) or you can create your own base. For the Bridal Bouquet that I made I wanted to include all of the ribbons even the ones that clearly would not fit into the aesthetic of the final product. So I took all the plastic bows along with discarded tissue paper and I began condensing them into tightly wound ball. I felt that in this way I was using everyone’s ribbons and every gift giver’s decorations were apart of the bouquet.

Wrap the ball up of "scraps" in masking tape, add another layer and then keep going until the wadded up gift décor has morphed into a taped up ball the size of bouquet you would like.

Made out of tissue paper, plastic ribbons and tape.

Step 3:
Making the handle

Once you are nearly to the size sphere you would like take a sharp pencil and picture the ball with it. You are creating the handle. You ahead and wrap more tissue paper (or more scrap paper) around the pencil until its the appropriate size. Next tape the whole "handle" along with the bouquet. I wrapped some floral wire around my bouquet base a few time to make certain it was really a tight wadded and of course you are trying to make it as round as possible. Do not wrap the handle with ribbon at this point, wait until the end.

Step 4:
Cover the base with light colored cloth Once you have the size you want, everything is tightly wound up and you have created your handle, take a cheap piece of light colored fabric add fabric glue (or hot glue to the ball and wrap it in the cloth. Adding the fabric assures that the ball will not fall apart and it gives you a clean canvas of sorts to start apply ribbon flowers.

Step 4:
Practice run

Go ahead and pin your fabric flowers to the bouquet base. By "pin" I mean place your fabric flower against globe and push a pin through flower. Its not "pretty" and its not permanent, but its very important to see if you have enough flowers made and that they are organized where you will want them.

Step 5:
Applying Pins to the ribbon flowers
Apply some hot glue to the back of the ribbon flower, while the glue is still hot place a pin with the ball portion in the hot glue, hold the pin upright until glue is dry. See the below photo.

Add some glue, apply pin, hold pin up if needed, allow to dry apply more glue apply to bouquet base.

Step 6:
Applying Pinned flowers to globe
Once all of your flowers have pins attached to them (and you are ready to permentaly apply the flowers to the base) apply more hot glue to the back of flower and carefully push the pined flower (with the still hot glue) into the base. Careful don't burn your fingers.

Step 7: Embellishments

Now for embellishments: I used two sort of embellishments.The first kind was old vintage mismatch finds (Please see below). The second sort was new rhinestone brooches from OFOFANCY on Etsy (Link is below). I LOVED OSOFANCY’s rhinestone brooches. They were very reasonable priced (just 99 cents each) and really made the bouquet sparkle. I cannot say enough good things about that shop, I was so happy to find them.

Rhinestones Brooches Link:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/OSOFANCY?ref=seller_info&sent=1

As far as Vintage jewelry I frequent a lot of thrift stores and second hand shops so I just asked each place if they had a “junk jewelry bin.” Some thrift store sell baggies of mismatched jewelry and that is always a good start! My opinion is that women have been wearing (and losing or breaking costume jewelry for a very long time, so a lot of cheap discarded stuff exists. You do not have to spend over 15 dollars on this portion of the project.

If you are not planning to visit any thrift shops check out etsy for great finds.
This shop Victorian Creations has great craft jewelry. http://www.etsy.com/shop/VictorianCreation

A word about Brooches: Odd and end earrings and charms would well but brooches and pins are the best because they already have a pin attached to them and you can simply add some hot glue (for good measure) and push the pin of the brooch into the globe

I went so far as to spray paint and use acrylic paint on few of my vintage embellishments. The silhouette brooch in this view of my bridal bouquet had a burnt yellow background. That didn't match my color set so I used acrylics paints to repaint it a nice light blue (See below photo)

Step 8:
Finishing touches

Once Ribbons flowers and embellishments are hot glued or sewn in to proper place. Go ahead and wrap the handle with some silky ribbon.

There you have it a gift the bride will very much enjoy.

.
Bridal Bouquet made of Ribbons from Shower

Garlands

Tomorrow I will make logos of a different shape.

My Intro to Self Branding

Created using Pixlr

Created using Pixlr

Created using Pixlr

Created using Pixlr

Created using Pixlr