Brooch Bouquet
The instructions we followed for wiring and assembling the brooches for my brooch bouquet come from Fancy Pants Weddings. Below are instructions for how we assembled the handle of the bouquet and the decorative wrapping of the handle.
The Handle:
I've seen a lot of creative ways to structure and support the handle of a brooch bouquet. Some have involved paint rollers and others have used paper towel tubes. While walking through a hardware store, I was in search of something that would be able to support my bouquet, have the proper size hole in which to fit my bouquet through as well as not be to large a diameter so that the proportions would look off. Here is what I found and I think it will be absolutely perfect for supporting my bouquet as well as easy to wrap.
1.5 inch diameter x 6 inch long Drain Tail Pipe. I found it along with PVC parts at our local hardware store. It was about $3.
The Handle:
I've seen a lot of creative ways to structure and support the handle of a brooch bouquet. Some have involved paint rollers and others have used paper towel tubes. While walking through a hardware store, I was in search of something that would be able to support my bouquet, have the proper size hole in which to fit my bouquet through as well as not be to large a diameter so that the proportions would look off. Here is what I found and I think it will be absolutely perfect for supporting my bouquet as well as easy to wrap.
1.5 inch diameter x 6 inch long Drain Tail Pipe. I found it along with PVC parts at our local hardware store. It was about $3.
Putting it all together:
We ended up getting some green floral foam to insert into the pipe. The pipe was pushed down on top of a block of floral foam, inserting the foam into the pipe. The bottom of the wire of the brooches had to be cut into almost a spear shape in order to stick it into the foam. Some foam was shaved out of the bottom of the pipe to allow room for some hot glue as well as the decorative piece to fit over the bottom.
Looking through the bottom of the pipe at the foam. You can see the hot glue that holds it all in place as well as some of the wires coming through the bottom of the pipe.
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We used some hot glue tacks on the top to keep the bouquet stable. This is holding up very well as I've held the bouquet upside down throughout this entire process.
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Once the glue dried and the bouquet was stable within the pipe we wrapped the pipe in ribbon. The ribbon we used was 1.5" wide wired ribbon. We overlapped the bottom and tucked the overlap into the bottom of the pipe, gluing it in and covering the bottom with a decorative button.
Next, we made a cuff of lace and a cuff of the green ribbon used for wrapping and hot glue tacked them up towards the top, layering them like this:
Lastly, we added the decorative lace detail around the middle and some buttons running down the seam.
And here is the finished product (click for larger images):