Weddingbee Blog

Today I’m gonna reveal my DIY bouts and how I made them! I’m getting better at the picture-taking-thing, but I didn’t snap a few of the steps. They’re pretty easy, though!

(Disclaimer! Sorry about the poor photo quality in these pictures! I’ve been using the camera on my Blackberry because something is wrong with the memory card in my actual camera!)

First, I gathered all my supplies.

Since we live in a teensy apartment, I don’t really have a crafting space. So I use our bar. At Michaels (using FIVE 50%-off-one-regular-price-item coups… SCORE!) I bought:

• yellow roses with leaves
• a few fiddle-head ferns
• some metallic-white “berries”
• a bag of feathers
• yellow ribbon
• a stem of fern with white “frost”
• floral tape
• floral wire

(I didn’t use all of the supplies I bought. I was just trying to give myself something to work with.)

I started with the roses by pulling them off the stem and removing all greenery around it. Then I took a length of wire, doubled it up a couple times, twisted, and hot-glued it into the bottom of the rose. This was a great idea because it gave the stem a lot more flexibility and was easier to push pins through.

I forgot to take a picture of the next step, but all I did was cut off a small stem of just leaves from the roses I bought. I placed it behind the rose and wrapped them together with floral tape. The great thing about floral tape is that it gets sticky when you pull it apart. So when I wrapped the yellow ribbon around, it stuck pretty well! Then I stuck in some pearl-headed pins.

I didn’t really love the way it looked with ALL yellow, so I dug around in my ribbon box (why, yes, I DO have a box filled entirely with RIBBON) and found a thin, pinkish ribbon. I removed the pins, hot-glued the yellow ribbon, and made a criss-cross design with the pink. Then I replaced the pins and this is how it looked.

Then I glued the pink ribbon to the back and used wire cutters to cut the ends off the pins. I really loved the way the stem was looking, but still felt like it needed more up top… Something to add a little more interest. So, I busted out the feathers!

After deciding on a cream, a tan, and a brown feather, I hot-glued them together and then to the back of the bout’. This is probably NOT the most professional way to get’er done, but it worked great for me. And, nobody is going to see the back anyway, right?

And here is the final product!

Again, I’m oh-so-sorry about the poor images. But you get the idea, right? And don’t they look great?! I’m SOOOOO happy with how they turned out! I even made a bout for each ring bearer (each stem came with 2 roses and one bud).

And there you have it! Our DIY bouts! I haven’t decided whether or not to use faux flowers for the bridesmaids or not… I’m DEFINITELY using them for our flower girl pomanders. But we’re using real for my bouquet and possibly H.Dawg’s bout (he said faux for his would be a good idea since he didn’t want them to get squished…).

So, what do you think? Are you using real or faux?