Weddingbee Blog

Today, Hive Hostess Bellenga shows us how she created spring themed fairy wands for her flower girls!

~~~

Many of you know I love all things Martha Stewart. In fact I absolutely adored the idea of having flower girl wands and saw the picture of them in her most recent wedding magazine, but wanted to do a different twist on them.

Since my flower girls are younger, I chose to use short wooden dowels, so the girls could carry them in front, similar to a bouquet, and have the ribbons move with them as they walked. I wanted movement and interest created as they skipped down the aisle! Next, I wanted to evoke images of a wand worthy of Tinkerbell, and decided the majority of the wooden dowel, except for the area I was to decorate on the very top and immediately below, was to look like it was a satin green stem of a flower!

Grassy green, ivory, and pinkish-coral shimmery ribbons, ivory paper flowers, green satin ribbon, wooden dowel, and ivory and yellow and pink with a hint of green faux rose petals came alive in my basket at Michaels and my creativity began to go wild!

Here is how I created the wands:

Materials:

• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Wooden dowels, approx. 1 foot
• Sheer Creations/Organza ribbons in your wedding colors and ivory
• Satin ribbon in either grassy green (for the stem) or in your wedding colors
• Faux rose petals in your wedding colors
• “Modern Romance” paper rose floral picks (found also at Michaels)

1. Plug in hot glue gun and unwrap the small paper flowers (found in the favor area at Michaels. Snip off the green wire at the base of each paper rose so that the backing is flat and only the green leafy part is seen.
2. Hold wooden dowel and carefully hot glue down the paper flower on top of the wooden dowel. Next, begin hot gluing each paper flower into areas around the wooden dowel to give a rose pomander/hydrangea type appearance and a ball-shape. Make sure there are no gaps between each flower you hot glue in place and that it dries and is in place firmly before adding a new flower.
3. Flip dowel upside down and glue rose petals firmly  under the bottoms of the roses. Make it look like the sepal area of the flower. Make sure the petals face upward, giving it a life-like appearance.
4. Next, in between each petal, glue one of the sheer ribbons in place (wand is still flipped upside down). Add more ribbons, using the same colored ribbon directly across from a same colored ribbon until there are at least six to eight ribbons glued onto the underside of the petals. Think of a 3-6-9-12- configuration on a clock. Make sure each length of ribbon is the same. This ribbon is great, because it glimmers and gives a gauze type, curling effect!
5. Now for the “stem” of the wand, you take the green (or color of your choice) satin ribbon and as close to the petal/ribbon area as you can, begin applying to the dowel itself some hot glue spreading it thinly and evenly down the dowel at about 1 inch intervals. Begin wrapping the satin ribbon tightly, making sure to overlap each edge of the ribbon, going downward in a spiral fashion to create the effect. Continue until at the end, and add a little extra hot glue and wrap it directly around the end of the dowel. Cut the satin ribbon flush with the dowel and dab a teeny amount of hot glue to fasten the edge down flat.

By the way, the total cost of making all of them was less than $20.00! I know I would have spent much more money had I commissioned somebody else on Etsy to create my vision.

Here are some more pictures of the finished products. I made three adorable flower girl fairy wands created Encore Bride style! Even my son exclaimed, “Wow mom. Lexi and Madison are going to love this, they’ll will wave them around everywhere!”

And that was exactly the type of response I was searching for.

I think the best compliment I received was when a neighbor saw me carrying one to the car. She said, “Wow. You should sell these! I would have wanted this for my wedding two years ago. Little girls would love this!” If another former bride likes it, and I like it, then darn it, I’ve created a very, very good thing! Thanks for the original idea, Martha!

~~~

Check out more of hostess Bellenga’s wedding adventures on her blog, The Encore Bride!