Flowers and Burns

Oh hello blogging world! I have such great news!

1. My orchid charms came in the mail. I experimented yesterday with making the necklace I loved and FAILED because I didn't realize that the necklace I was copying was actually a fake lariat and needed a clasp. After one hour of driving around this cow town, no one sold chain, so I'm back to waiting until I can get to Micahels. Which is likely Friday. Gah!

I'm ready beads!

2. I finished my flowers! At least, they were done until about 3 minutes ago when I took pictures and ended up unwrapping the ribbon on the bridesmaid bouquets just by touching them. Oh well. Lots of glue every inch or so and a new wrap will solve that fairly easily. Until then, here are the pictures... (note: These pictures suck! The lighting is horrible in here today and my lens is filthy. Also my arm hurts, but that's coming)

Note the pearls on the handle. Oh yeah...

Bouts

BM bouquets. Happened to take it from the only angle that makes it look flat, of course. GAH!

My bouquet again.

3. Yesterday, while taking pizza out of the oven I got this.

IT HURTS SO BAD!

I blame Mr. Sunshine who was caught up in his video games. So much so that the pizza was burning, I was trying to salvage our dinner, the dogs were winding in between my legs and he kept saying "one minute!" instead of helping me. Long story short, a dog tripped me and I fell on the oven. Holy crap does it ever hurt! It actually looks a lot better than it did, and I am attributing that to Burt's Beeswax's Foot Balm. Sound stupid, but I knew burns needed moisture and this stuff is the thickest, stickiest, most moisturizing lotion I own. By god does it work! Now that it's not red anymore (just burned), I'm going to polysporin and Vitamin E in the desperate hope it fades before my wedding.

Oh well!

Anyone else have pre-wedding injuries?

~Miss. Sunshine

Into the Swing of Things *please vote!*

Man was today ever a productive day! I accomplished the following:

- finished three bouts (not sure if I am doing one for my dad, as I'm not doing coursages for the moms, but we'll see)
-finished my bridal bouquet except to glue pearls where ribbon intertwines
-finished one bridesmaid bouquet, except to glue pearls down the centre
-finished one bridesmaid bouquet, except was short one paper towel roll (lots at work though!) so I have to wait until tomorrow to finish up my tutorial on how to create the perfect handle for faux flowers
-finished writing that last damned invite from hell. Took forever to get an address, so the rest went out weeks ago
-updated my RSVP list with the correct information
-started thinking about how to package my favours... and need your help!


Okay!

I was inspired by the wedding bee to create these cute (and I mean tiny and cute) wedding favours. After filling 60 jars with some seed, I am out of ideas for how to package them. Every label I attach is GIANT, as these are small. At the same time, I don't want to kill them by packaging them in a box and taking away the rustic feel to them. So I am not sure what to do.

Here is the favours:

For the record, American and Canadian quarters are the same size.

And here are some ideas for packaging I have come up with:

Not these exact ones, of course, but the box shape.

I've seen these bags everywhere and they would be easy to use and see through.

A cute box with a flip open top?

Spice up a "boring" box?

Help me decide! I have a feeling this will be the next project to tackle.

~Miss Sunshine.

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

DIY-- Making my own flowers

As you might have gathered from previous posts-- I am cheap. SO cheap! So cheap, in fact, that when the quote for my flowers came (1 bridal bouquet, 2 bridesmaid bouquets and 4 bouts) and was around $500 including delivery, plus taxes, I almost fell over dead.

HOW CAN FLOWERS COST SO MUCH!?!

So today I revealed this tidbit to my mother, who insisted I should just use fake flowers, like she did at her wedding. Now, I had considered this in the past, but I was on the "well real flowers look better, but cost so much more" fence. Today, however, Michael's had 60% off many of their flowers, and I was in desperate need of silver acrylic paint, so I figured I'd give it a go.

So you, dear readers, will be the first in the world to see my not-yet-complete flowers and soon will see a tutorial. The total time to create my bouquet was less than an hour, including about twenty looks in the mirror just to make sure it was even. I'm telling you now, doing this in front of the large mirror in our dining room was an awesome idea.

And now, the reveal!

Bridal bouquet. I am thinking I will add some greenery interspersed to add some colour and a 'pop'.

Idea for bridesmaids. Much smaller with only three large flowers and perhaps some greenery.

The disaster that is my wedding table and also the dining room table. Mr. Sunshine loathes this mess.

So all in all, because I took advantage of Michael's 60% off sale, and teacher discount (another 10% off), the cost of flowers was $24.93. Beyond this, I had to buy floral tape ($3.36), and will have to buy some nice straight pins, ribbon and some greenery (appx $20?).  With a total cost coming to be about $50, I am more than happy spending less than ten percent of real flowers!

What have you saved money on? Any hidden talents revealing themselves to you?

~Miss. Sunshine