DIY Bouts

I went to work today and left at lunch to procure some medicine. I fought the cough and the cough won and kicked my ass on the way out. After a quick (I love this city!) visit to the walk-in clinic, I left with a better inhaler and some antibiotics to get rid of the remainder of this cold.

Anyways, now that I can breathe properly, I am bored and thought, what better way to start this afternoon than to get going on the bouts that I am HATING. I have made over 10 mock ups using a variety of different leaf/flower combinations and techniques and have hated them all. After reading a few more tutorials on how to do bouts using silk flowers, real flowers and even fabric flowers, I figured I'd give it one last go and came up with this...

So purdy!

I am so impressed! Hey-a bout, wanna go for a ride? *wink*. Anyways, it currently is made from better quality hydrangeas than those in my bouquet (although for 6 times the price per stem, they look almost identical), as well as the leaves from the peonies I used in my bouquet and I love it! This one is for Mr. Sunshine, so it has some pearls to match the necklace and bracelet I made for my dress, as well as the pearls on my veil.

So I figured after all the damned trouble I came up with, I  would make a tutorial for the next poor sucker who tries this...

What You Need

• hydrangea flower
• large leaves that you think look good as a background
• pearl and fishing line flower decor thing (no idea what it's really called, clearly)
• floral tape
• wire cutters
• sharp scissors
• 20-24 gauge wire (something thick enough to be strong to hold up the stems, but easy to wrap)

The how to part...

1. Cut a few flowers off your hydrangea. You want to leave as much of a "stem" as possible to allow for a good wire wrap. I used 4-5 blooms for my bouts.
2. Cut 4-5 pieces of wire about 6 inches long.
3. Wrap each stem with a piece of wire until the wire and stem are quite secure. To make mine secure I first bent the wire into an L shape at the end and lined up the L with the stem. I wrapped around the L and the stem at the same time to ensure that the wire was firm, then tightened what needed to be tightened with my beading pliers that have a nice flat edge to them.
4. Bunch the flowers the way that you will want them to sit in front of the leaves and then carefully twist the wires together into a big bunch. I used pliers to tighten the wrap to ensure that the wires were firmly held together, and then trimmed the ends to about 4 inches long.
5. Wrap the entire wire/flower thing you have in floral tape, covering up all wire. I would suggest starting at the top of the piece and working your way to the bottom, and then wrapping it back up to the top for extra strength.
6. Position the beads on the back and wrap onto what you have made in step 5.
7. Position the leaves on the back and wrap onto what you have made in step 6.
8. Tada! You are done! To finish it off, add a dab of glue at the bottom of the floral tape and wrap the floral tape in a nice ribbon to hide the ugly green.

While that might NOT have helped, I hope it gave you some hope for what can be accomplished! Here is a final picture, just in case you want to see what two crap and one great one might look like...

Crappy, AMAZING, and okay looking bouts.

~Miss. Sunshine