making my best friend’s brooch bouquet

I first met Jen in the seventh grade, when she started going to Kingswood Middle School.  We had both just turned 12 years old. I remember going to her for advice about a friend because she seemed so wise to me, and since then we’ve been friends for almost 20 years.

Jen was my maid of honor when I got married in 2009, and earlier this month she got married to her fantastic husband McDonald. Although Jen and Mac weren’t having an official wedding party, I wanted to find a way to help Jen on her wedding day.

She’s an artist and was creating many of the wedding elements herself, from their illustrated portraits on the wedding invitations to the watercolor seating cards. When she mentioned in July that she had hoped to create a brooch bouquet but wasn’t sure she’d have the time, I volunteered. I wanted to create something memorable and special that she would be able to keep forever.

With the color scheme of silvers and blues as a guideline, I basically went hog wild at our local Salvation Army and Kellie’s Consignments for pins, earrings, necklaces, and other jewelry elements. My favorite find at the consignment store was a small Statue of Liberty pin, because Jen and Mac met on the subway in New York City. I allowed myself to be creative and found some great things like the necklace pictured on the top left of this picture. The necklace was super marked down at the consignment store, and all it took was some pliers to remove the three large pieces from the chain.

It took a lot of Googling around to figure out the best techniques for creating a brooch bouquet. There are a few different methods, and I ended up using techniques from the different tutorials mixed together. The most helpful was from The Knot.

At the craft store, I bought a six-inch white foam ball to act as the base of the bouquet. The craft store is also where I stocked up on floral picks (I found large packs of them in the wedding section that weren’t very expensive) to keep the jewelry pieces in place, as well as some blingy floral picks, wire accents, and additional brooches. I also bought my first cheapie hot glue gun,  one that was specifically good to use on styrofoam.

For the handle, I had to improvise. The tutorials mentioned buying a wood dowel and sawing it down to the correct length, but to be honest, I’m not that good with power tools. Instead, I bought a pack of shorter wood dowels at the craft store and hot-glued three of them together in a sort of Mickey Mouse head formation, in order to make a stronger, wider handle. After the handle was glued together, I centered it on the ball and pressed it into the styrofoam until it was about 3/4 of the way through. Once I had it at the correct depth, I removed the handle and put hot glue on both the handle and the interior of the foam ball, before putting the handle back in. That helped to make the handle super secure. It also helped to place the bouquet in a vase tall enough that it would help prop it up in place.

Instead of using a metallic spray paint on the foam ball, I found a glitter tulle that I cut into pieces and draped over the ball, pinning into place toward the bottom. As I added pins and jeweled elements to the ball, it helped to secure the tulle in place. The glitter tulle was super messy (more Glitter than a Mariah Carey fan could handle), but created a very pretty background to the jewelry pieces.

To be honest, everything came together very quickly once I had enough of the jewelry and figured out the handle situation. It was a lot of fun placing the different jewelry pieces in a way that they would layer together nicely. I made the J and M initial pins the sort of centerpiece of the bouquet so they would show up well for photos, and kept the position of the bouquet in mind as I placed the pins. For example, I wanted the beaded blue heart charm to be close to the initials, and these little cupid charms I took from a pair of hoop earrings dangling in the front. I used the floral pins to keep the pieces in place on the foam ball.

All of the pearl tips of the floral picks added a pretty texture to the bouquet, and I filled in the gap areas with the larger jeweled floral picks. For some of the jewelry, such as the stud earrings, I waited until everything was in the perfect spot and then used the hot glue gun to keep those in place.

I’ve seen a lot of brooch bouquets online and while many of them are more “formal” or incorporate fake flowers to look more bridal, I thought that the fun assortment of pins and jewelry I found really fit with Jen’s vibe and personality. I felt very lucky with the whole process as far as how quickly it actually went, and finding the perfect jewelry.

When the ball was about two-thirds of the way covered (not to mention very heavy!), I used the trick from The Knot’s tutorial video of tying a longer length of tulle at the base of the ball and pinning it into place. This made the base of the bouquet look like deliciously beautiful cotton candy! By having the bottom third just with the tulle, it was much easier to rest the bouquet inside the vase, not to mention less heavy, and also took away the possibility of her snagging her dress while holding it.

The final step for the bouquet, once all of the pieces felt super secure, was wrapping the wooden handle. I bought a one-inch-wide blue satin wired ribbon so that it would form well around the handle, and cut a very long piece.  I started by covering the handle bottom, and then wrapped the handle at a diagonal so that the ribbon slightly overlapped itself. I wrapped going up the handle to just beneath the ball, and back down the handle. As I wrapped the handle, I also added in some rhinestone floral picks from the craft store, so that they would frame the bottom of the ball, almost like greenery on an actual bouquet.

Once I had used up the ribbon piece, I folded the end to create a clean line, and then secured it in place with two of the floral picks. It was a little difficult because I wasn’t able to puncture the handle the way you might with real flower stems, but with a little finesse, it worked. I had been worried that the handle would feel a bit funny as three smaller handles glued together, but the layers of ribbon made it comfortable enough to hold, and I was glad the bouquet had a wider handle to support its weight.

I was so very happy with the final product. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever made:

And on August 5th, 2017, I was able to see it come to life with my stunning friend Jen using it on her wedding day.

 

good friends kashi for life.

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