DIY Wedding

Brooch Bouquet in Progress - Part 1

Yesterday I made one final (yeah, right) trip to Michaels to pick up the supplies to make my brooch bouquet. I’ve seen several tutorials and different versions of brooch bouquets and I think I’m going to take a little of what works best for each of them to create my own.

MY IDEA:
- Use a 7 ½ inch semi-circle Styrofoam for the base. This way I will keep the perfect circular shaped.
- Add silk hydrangea leaves to the base to cover up to Styrofoam
- Attach 12” of 20 gauge floral wire to the brooch/pin/clip/earring
- Attach 14” craft wire to the brooch and wrap the floral wire around it to keep the brooch from moving.
- Cover the floral wire with floral tape
- Insert the craft wire into the Styrofoam.
- Gather craft wire ends underneath foam to create a handle
- Use stems from hydrangea to add bulk to the handle
-Wrap the handle with ribbon

I’m also considering adding silk garden roses underneath to help fill in the bottom and almost complete the sphere shape that I’m after. I didn’t want to have the entire sphere be brooches because of the weight. Just from the test run last night I see this is going to be heavy!

Here are the photos of what I’ve completed so far. I was able to get half of the brooches laced up with floral wire. I only had enough craft wire to complete 10 stems from the Dollar Tree. Guess I’ll be heading back again today. I should get done with wiring them up this weekend.
First lesson learned is that I should have purchased silver floral wire. It costs a little more, but it wouldn’t be as noticeable as the green wire. I had a hard time pinching it back so it didn’t show through the brooches and the green comes off the wire and makes a bit of a mess. Guess it’s a preference issue. But it comes in lots of colors, so match it to your scheme.