Those who risk, win: Sunday, Busy Sunday: or, The Time I Crafted a Brooch Bouquet and it Turned Out Awesome!

Don't worry, I'll start with the running, since that's the deal and all. But, mostly, this is going to be about my bouquet and how I made it, so if you're here for my running stats, you'll only need these first few sentences. It was hot and humid today, even at 8 a.m. We went for a 9 mile run and it was pretty awful. If you want the deets, you can check out my mapmyrun for the info. Spoiler alert: my fastest was a 9:14, my slowest was an 11:13. I told you it was miserable.

And now for something completely different!

My bouquet! My fabulous, gorgeous, awesome bouquet of brooches and other fancy jewelry, the idea of which I got on none other than the all powerful Pinterest. I've been going back and forth on what to do about the flowers for the wedding. Personally, I don't really see the need to spend a ton of money on a bunch of flowers that will wilt and die. "Oh, but you could dry them out," says everyone ever who I talk to. But let's be realistic here. I don't know how, nor do I have the time or concern to attempt to learn or try to dry out a bouquet. Plus all the flowers I liked were exotic and therefore ridiculously overpriced, and I mean, come on, budget, hello! Since I've been cruising the wedding section on Pinterest and seeing all those brooch bouquets, I decided to create one of my own. (See previous post for more details about the brooches.) Yesterday I went to a couple of estate and yard sales with some friends of mine and we found some pretty nice stuff. By Saturday night, I had all my brooches wired and ready to be wrapped. By 3:00 today, I had my bouquet together. Sure, I have no idea where I'm going to store it for the next 9 months, but that's a problem for future me.

So you might be wondering how a person who started this project on a Monday was able to finish it in under a week. Well I'll tell you; pure and simple, not being too picky. If you Google DIY bouquets, you'll find a lot of ideas, tips, and stories. I found a common theme of people having to comb through tons of shops and spending 100s of dollars on brooches. Let me tell you right now, if you are willing to accept that you don't need a 100% matching color scheme bouquet, you'll get a lot further. Oh, and thrift shops, estate sales, and especially the clearance stickers at Michael's should become your new favorite things. But back to not being picky. Our color scheme is yellow, blue, and gray. However, I wasn't going to limit myself to finding only yellow, blue, or gray brooches. I did look for those colors first, and I did try to make sure I had enough for that to be the most common color scheme in the bouquet though. Here's what I did, that really worked well, and it saved a ton of money. First, I checked the Christmas Tree Shop. For those of you who don't have one of those, it's basically a giant bargain store, think along the lines of Ocean State Job Lot, Big Lots, etc, except for some reason, it seems a whole lot cleaner inside. I got lucky and apparently blue and yellow are in right now, because they had a ton of earrings in both colors. The best part is, each set was only $1.99. I was able to get 20 pieces for $10. Right off the bat, I am a money saving queen, as you can clearly tell. After I struck out at Target, Ocean State, and Marshalls, I went over to Michael's. Lo and behold! They have obviously learned to cash in on the brooch business while it's hot because they had an entire wall of brooches and pendants, right up front in the jewelry making section. I will warn you that many of them are at least $4.99, but once again I managed to find the perfect items on clearance for under $2.00. THEN, I got a 40% off coupon, so I went back to buy the $4.99 brooch that I really liked, still keeping it fairly low in cost. I know, I know, no one bargain shops like I do. Lest you think I'm lying, I also got a giant ziplock gallon sized bag of brooches and earrings for $45. I used half of it. Definitely worth far more than I paid, especially if you break it down per item. Basically, what I'm saying is, you can easily keep your cost down and find pieces that are under $2.00. Your bouquet doesn't have to be $700 like they charge on Etsy. Sometimes, you can get a good deal on Ebay, but as a warning, a lot of the lots and even the individual pins are WAY overpriced.

So, now you know how to get your brooches. Or maybe you already have some, and you came here to find out how to put them together. When I started, I saw two different methods. The first method required wrapping floral wire around each individual piece and twisting that into a stem. The second method also involved floral wire, though I did see someone use pins, and required you to stick the wire wrapped brooch into a styrofoam ball. Wrapping wire seemed like a lot of work so I was pretty interested in the styrofoam ball approach. What I couldn't find was a comparison. What looked better? Which worked? Did anything go wrong with either method? So, I did what any normal person would do, and I tried both methods.

First, I started with the styrofoam ball. The directions said to paint it, so I did. Or rather, I watched the paint slide all around the surface. So, after a trip back to the store to purchase a non-floral arrangement styrofoam ball, one that is clearly porous, I tried again. This time, the paint stuck, but it did take a while for it to absorb. There was also the issue of the size of the ball. 4", 6", half of an 8" sphere, there were so many ideas online. I tried a half of a 6" and a 4.5". Neither looked good. It was just too hard to fill all the gaps, you could hear all the brooches clinking together, and let me tell you, it is damn hard to get floral wire into a styrofoam ball. Don't even BOTHER with the floral ball. The type that's smooth and hard and you can't poke a finger into it and looks like it's made of super packed styrofoam. You'll be there all day trying to get your wires in.

After the styrofoam balls didn't work out, I did indeed spend the time wrapping the wires. Some people said it was a lot of work, and it was. There's no way out of that. However, I wouldn't go crazy trying to find the 20 gauge floral wire that everyone seemed to use. I had a ton of 24 gauge wire left over from previous wreath crafts, in gold and red. I saw no need to go out and buy more in green. Instead, I used what I had and then covered that in green floral tape. Some brooches required more wire than others, just to hold it up, but it really didn't take that long. Just a few nights. If you can get some friends in on your crafting, you can have it done in no time.

When I had my wire stems made, I wrapped them in green sticky floral tape, which was gross. It's double sided and leaves everything sticky, but it covered the wires and made them look more stem like, so I suppose I would keep that step. Towards the end, I got a little sick of wrapping wires, so I cheated just a little bit. I cut off the backs of the small earrings and hot glued them into a small clump of fake hydrangeas I had. A tip on wire wrapping: some of the pieces don't have backs or clips to wrap the wire around. I found that many of them did have small holes that you could poke the wires through and then meet around behind. Even if the piece is silver or gold and the wire is red or green, it's not noticeable in the end. Or, you can hot glue the wire to the back, if you have the glue gun out anyways.
Once I had everything wrapped and ready, I took my clump of fake flowers and used that as my exact middle. Then I started adding in the big brooches. To keep everything together, I wrapped up the add-ons in green duct tape every few pieces. I was also concerned about my bouquet rounding out too soon. Luckily, I had a perfect size piece of pipe in my basement, so I stuck my main middle piece through that, and then added more on the outside. This kept the top a little bit flatter and a little bit wider. You can't see the pipe at all, and I just continued duct taping things on as I went. In the end, it came out pretty awesome, and I love it.

So let's recap:

Don't be too picky.

It doesn't have to be expensive OR take forever, especially if it's yard sale season.

Styrofoam vs. wire stems, I say wire stems all the way, the styrofoam is tricky.

Have fun.

Here's some pictures and a list of things you might need.

- floral wire: 24 gauge works fine, but you can go higher. The smaller the number, the fatter the wire

- pliers that cut wire

- floral tape

- duct tape

- a piece of pipe (though I'm fairly certain you could use a toilet paper roll, it was about the same size and not nearly as heavy)

- hot glue (not necessary, but helpful)