Weddingbee Blog

The last time you saw the corsages, they looked like this:

I finally got around to finishing them!

Originally, I wanted to find stretchy beaded bracelets, have each woman wear three or four of them, and attach the flowers to the stacks to create the illusion of single bracelets with multiple loops.

Only I couldn’t find stretchy beaded bracelets ANYWHERE. Maybe I didn’t look too hard, or maybe I didn’t look long enough, but I couldn’t find them! No matter—I decided to make them myself.

I have a ton of floral wire for a project you haven’t seen yet, so I set off to my good friend Michaels and snagged some jewelry-making supplies.

This is a big ol’ container of pearl-like beads in various sizes. I bought two of them. Turns out, I didn’t need that many…no matter, it’s better to have too much than not enough!

I finished each bracelet with a clasp, a jump ring, and a length of chain, to make it adjustable.

Well, OK, so maybe “bracelet” isn’t an entirely accurate word. See, the process of attaching the aforementioned closures was, well, tedious, so I didn’t want to have to do it 20 times. Instead, I created essentially necklaces that can be worn as such or wrapped several times around the wrist to create that layered look I’m going for.

I was really going for random with these—I didn’t want there to be any discernible pattern in the way I strung on the various sized beads; I wanted to literally just grab beads out of the container without really looking and put them on in whatever order I grabbed them in, so that each piece of jewelry was completely unique. Turns out, I really am slightly obsessive and my brain has a really difficult time with the concept of random. I was singing along to Adele while I worked to make the whole process slightly less tedious, and I would look down at the end of a song and notice that I had, indeed, been stringing beads in a pattern—three little, three big, three little, three big, or something like that—without even noticing! I didn’t undo anything, but at such a point I would purposefully choose a bead to screw up the pattern and try to force myself to un-pattern the rest of the design. Apparently being random is a lot harder than it sounds.

On one of my pretty much weekly trips to Michaels, I stumbled upon this spool of amazing ribbon. It has maps on it—just like our card box and ring bearer book!—meaning it fits perfectly with the “adventure” part of A Geeky Adventure. Clearly, I needed this ribbon. I didn’t have an exact plan for this ribbon quite yet…but I needed it. No worries—I’ve found a use for it! After all, I need a way to connect the flowers to the bracelets…

Raise your hand if you watch Project Runway. C’mon, admit it, you totally do—even Mr. Potion watches it with me, though he calls it Project Runaway in an effort to retain his Man Card.

You know how there’s always that contestant that has ridiculously complicated designs, and when Tim comes around just before the end of the day, she’s got gorgeous drawings and a bunch of fabric pinned together on the form? And Tim lauds her for where it’s going but points out that something’s missing, and she says, “Oh, well I’m also doing a blazer, I just haven’t started it yet.” And all Tim can say is…

{image from Lifetime}

Inevitably, the next morning, our hapless designer does not have time to sew together her gorgeous blazer, and she has to result to the dreaded hot glue gun in lieu of a sewing machine. A snooty competitor will scoff that “this isn’t a craft project” and be shocked when she isn’t sent home, but, in the end, the judges will admit that this is a design competition, not a sewing competition, and said snooty competitor will find himself resorting to the glue gun before the season is over when he, too, is down to the wire.

Why am I recounting this scene we see time and time again on one of my favorite competition shows?

Because I, too, am resulting to the dreaded glue gun instead of putting on my big-girl pants and dragging out the sewing machine once more.

The offending tool

Screw it. Nobody will know the difference.

I cut a length of this awesome ribbon, and where I should have run a line of stitches, I used hot glue, instead—this way there’s no scraggly ends.

To attach the ribbon to the flower, I once again relied on the dreaded hot glue. WHATEVER, Y’ALL.

And here’s ANOTHER cheat—these amazing little velcro dots. They’re technically not recommended for use on fabric, but again—WHATEVER, Y’ALL.

To assemble the corsages, I simply wound the bracelets into three loops, then slipped the ribbon in and closed the velcro.

Here’s how the finished product looks. I love that these are completely adjustable- there’s a length of chain for the clasp in case it needs to be tighter, or it can be wound a fourth time for particularly skinny wrists (like mine!).

What do you think? Did you have corsages for the special women in your life on The Big Day?