Weddingbee boards

Wow, now I kind of want to do this! Consider including other kinds of jewelry, like mis-matched earrings, in addition to the brooches, or even instead of.  You can get these pretty cheaply in antique, vintage, and thrift stores sometimes.  It seems like you could hotglue the pieces onto foam balls or other base materials as long as you had a bouquet holder or some kind of cone to keep them in.  Then I'd trim the edges with a pretty fabric or ribbon to hide any stray pieces of foam.  This way you could fill in non-brooch/earring spaces with beads and sequins or buttons on pins or twisted wire pretty easily.

Hello!  I am inspired to do this too.  I live in KC and have hit up every thrift store in the city.  If any other brides in KC are trying to do this, sorry, I snatched 'em all up already!

I went to a flea market and seriously got 20 in one shot.  Try this!  I also asked all my friends and family to help and I have recieved several this way.  I have also purchased clip earrings and rings.  I picked up 3-4 at Forever 21, they are more expensive, but crazy cute!

I will post pics when done...anyone else out there done with one yet?

Heres a question...what to do for the bridesmaids bouquets? 

Hi!  I'm making a beautiful brooch bouquet for my daughter's wedding in May. 

I wrote a sweet note explaining how sentimental my daughter is, and that though her wedding will be small, she wished there was a way all of our family and friends could be represented.  I printed the note on pretty floral cards, downloaded the picture of the bouquet I found on etsy - and had 60 copies made of it, along with copies of a great picture of my daughter and her fiance. 

I bought several 10-packs of the small padded envelopes from Walmart ($4.50 for 10), and put the card, the two pictures, and a self-addressed and stamped padded envelope in a larger envelope and sent it off to my friends and family.  I gave them a deadline - two weeks - and asked them to donate a piece of jewelry, either new or used.  I found some great and inexpensive brooches on ebay last week - a set of 7 large colorful ones for $20. 

I've already gotten over 30 pieces of donated jewelry - and everyone was thrilled to be asked to be part of my daughter's bouquet.  I'm sure I'll get lots more.  So my total investment in the bouquet was for postage, cards, padded envelopes and reprints - which I did at Walgreen's for 10 cents each.  I put a $.61 cent stamp on the padded envelope in case the piece they were sending would be heavy - but the whole packet that I mailed took just a 44 cent on it. 

All together, with the materials and the ones I bought from ebay, was just under $100.  And it's meaningful to my daughter that the jewelry came from our friends and family. 

It's important to include a picture of the bouquet so they'll know what kinds of jewelry will work.  I should start putting it together next week.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Hello all,

I am writing because I searched everywhere on how to make these bouquets, and this topic was a very helpful result for me.  So now that my DIY project is complete, I wanted to share how it came along!

I am making this as a surprise for my sister-in-law to be, for her bridal shower and to carry during rehearsal.  Her mother and mine contributed some brooches, I bought others.  Ebay had some lots very cheap, rubylane has TONS in a great range of prices, as did etsy.  I did set a limit per pin up front, but spent a little extra on some special ones (for example, a USNavy pin for my brother, a script rinestone "N" for the bride's name, a high heel shoe for her love of all things shopping!).  Some vendos threw in free extras.  I used gold, ivory, pearl, resin, enamel, rinestone, lucite along with her colors of green and pink.  I ended up with 28 pins and spent around $160.

Here's where I searched online.  I couldn't figure out how to assemble it!  I thought of using a styrofoam ball (or half) but didn't want to see it through the pins AT ALL.  I tried chenile stems, but they weren't sturdy enough, and I didn't like that fuzzy look.  I bought two floral bunches with heavy wire stems from craft store 40% off and popped off all flowers and leaves (ones I liked and will use in a wreath later).  I cut apart all stems and bent 1/2 to 1" top at right angle.  So far so good!

Now I tried sewing stems to pin arm, taping the pin, and wiring the pin.  Nothing held the pin steady (it would wobble side-to-side along pin arm).  Got out the hot glue gun.  Didn't want to "ruin" the pins, although they aren't valuable.  Turns out the glue doesn't stick THAT well, comes off in one piece without damaging pins!  And with strategic placement of top of stem (usually alongside pin arm where you can't see it), this worked VERY WELL.  Some heavy pins I used double stems, gluing both stems to same pin back.  Very sturdy result.

Now I arranged them like flowers, going in a circle, using florist tape around every 3-5 stems to hold in place.  At the end, I used a LOT of tape all up and down length of stems.  Then covered with ribbon: hot glue dot to hold end of ribbon, wrap all up and down, then go back over this time twisting twice at the same place each time around for little pizazz and to make ribbon lay flat around the "cone" shape, glue about 1" from end and again at the end, cut and tuck under.  I put another decorative ribbon around in a bow right over top of glued end.  Also put a little pin near bow.  I pulled pins around a bit to arrange them.  CAUTION: pulling on pins will pop them off since glue is very semi-permanent.  Move pins by bending their STEMS!  They're harder to glue on once taped into the bouquet!

Tada!  MUCH easier than I thought it would be.  Hardest part was gluing stems to pins, took maybe 30 minutes.  If making a larger bouquet, I might find thinner heavy stems or add wire V-shapes on ends to put 2 pins per stem.

GO FOR IT YOURSELF!  You can do this!

Jen :O)

jjbudelis Thank you SO much for your informative post. 

I'm in the process of gathering brooches, earrings, etc for my own bouquet. I've been asking family, friends & anyone who wants to help to donate pieces to the bouquet. I'm keeping a blog, writing up a story about each piece and/or the person who gave it to me, so I'll have a record of all the contributions. (Eventually, I plan to make some type of photobook/scrapbook from the posts.) If you're interested, here's the blog: http://mybridalbouquet.wordpress.com

I haven't tried to put any of the pieces together yet; I thought I'd wait till I had them all & start experimenting then. (I'm thinking about a month / 6 weeks before the wedding.) This post will help greatly with that process! I was thinking I'd go the 'treat them like real flowers' route, so good to know that's similar to what you did.

Also, in case anyone is looking for something that might match for girls in the wedding party, I'm looking at doing something like this: http://offbeatbride.com/2010/02/crystal-bouquets

etsy.com - gloriaslaughter - search for Brooch Bridal Bouquets - She will take your brooches and create the bouquet for you.

Sorry for the delay.....was actually getting the photo and getting it onto the computer that took so long!

Also, my aunt (who is the ultimate everything crafter!) tells me Aleenes makes a glue specifically for metal.  I looked it up, it's Aleene's Jewelry & Metal Glue, and is supposed to be an instant adhesive, clear strong and permanent.  This would be a better, fail-free way to attach the pins!

Jen :O)

In these photos, I actually hadn't spread out the "flowers" yet (two popped off and had to be re-glued later).  Also, in the second photo, you can see where I saved a white lucite lady bug (avon) to pin on near the pink decorative bow.

If I were making this for the wedding itself, I'd put more pins and make it even bigger and fuller.

Good luck!  YOU CAN DO THIS YOURSELF!  Jen :O)

I make these for my Etsy shop but am not scared to share some secrets!

First, start with a styrofoam ball.  Cut in half, spray it gold or silver, and use that as your base.  Glue the buttons/filler on first, attach wire to your bigger pieces and stick them in/glue them in between.  Finish by gluing a wooden dowel as your "stems" and cover it and the base of your styrofoam with loops of satin ribbon.  Easy peasy!  Here is a photo of mine.  Way easier this way and doesn't look naked like the wire ones do, IMHO.

Good luck!!!