Jewelry Bouquet

LittleWohlscheid

I'm working on a jewelry bouquet and I'm almost ready to start arranging it. I'm using the flower method where it has a wire stem wrapped in floral tape and doesn't use a styrofoam ball. Can anyone who is making or has made one tell me how you arranged it? Did you use a bouquet holder or some other method?

sarahjane222

I'm still in the process of making mine but I used a bouquet holder (armature) and I think I would recommend it. When I first started I wondered if I'd need it but as I keep going and filling in spots, it's really helpful to give me more control on where some things are. I covered the entire holder with hydrangeas first and then I stuck in various jewelry pieces on wire afterward. I've attached a pic - it still needs some fine tuning and a bit more jewelry. 

LittleWohlscheid

sarahjane222 said:

I'm still in the process of making mine but I used a bouquet holder (armature) and I think I would recommend it. When I first started I wondered if I'd need it but as I keep going and filling in spots, it's really helpful to give me more control on where some things are. I covered the entire holder with hydrangeas first and then I stuck in various jewelry pieces on wire afterward. I've attached a pic - it still needs some fine tuning and a bit more jewelry. 

Thanks! I've been looking for that kind of holder but I had no idea what it was called. My searches kept leading to ones that had foam in them. You're bouquet looks great so far

lovesclimbing

You should check out the DIY board.  I see this sort of bouquet posted over there frequently.  You'd probably get quite a bit more attention over there.

lookame3639

I wrapped mine in floral tape then wrapped it in gold and black ribbon. I prefer the look of a hand tied bouquet over the look of a holder. Holders look to small for a large bouquet and some look cheap. I also put a bin around the base of mine in gold crape ribbon and gold and silver seed and bugel beads.

lookame3639

Let's see if i can dig out a picture

mine is really sentimental. My mom helped me make it and gave me a lot of her and my grandma's brooches to use (my grandma recently passed) FI and I graduated from the same year and same school and i also put our class rings in it.

badbnagdway

Question for you broach bouquet ladies -- I have a friend who wants to do one but is concerned about the cost of it -- she thinks obtaining all the broaches might be prohibitively expensive. What do you ladies think? I'm sure she has a few on hand but probably will need to get most of them. She is an avid thrifter but still put off by the price. How did you obtain a bunch of broaches at a reasonable cost? 

LittleWohlscheid

@lookame3639 Did you put it in the bin while you arranged it, like a vase or anything? I do really like the hand tied look and am considering doing that. I love the class ring idea, too.

@badbnagdway It hasn't cost me too much so far. I got some of my jewelry on sale at Hobby Lobby and Joann Fabric and one of my aunts heard about what I was making and ended up giving me a ton of old jewelry (earrings, brooches, and necklaces). Walmart has a lot of buttons that look like jewelry and I bought floral wire at Walmart for $1.27. SarahJane222 mentioned using silk hydrangeas as filler which aren't too expensive and I used scrapbook flowers. She'll need a hot glue gun, too. She should look at her jewelry and maybe mention to some family members and she'd probably have enough stuff in no time for a decent price. I've spent about $30 on all of my materials, if that. Also RetailMeNot usually has good coupons for craft stores.

The filler and using jewelry-looking buttons will definitely cut the cost and make it so she can spend more on a few specific pieces. Sorry if that was way more info than you expected, but I hope it helps. 

badbnagdway

LittleWohlscheid, certainly not too much information. Her wedding isn't until next September. Her colors are basically gold and white and silver and she doesn't want real flowers. I think the only thing holding her back from it is the cost for some reason. I was thinking about making her one myself as a present and if she didn't like it she could just not use it. 

LittleWohlscheid

@badbnagdway I've found it to be much cheaper than a lot of real flowers so far and with those colors it should be easy to make it fit her color scheme. If you do end up making one just make sure you start early- crafting it doesn't take too long, but finding all of the pieces may. Even if she doesn't use it, that still would be a nice present.

lookame3639

My mom held the flowers and brooches while i arranged them/she arranged them. It was a little tricky anytime we put a new brooch in the grip had to be loosened and sometimes the placement of other brooches would fall. When I was finished i did a mix of hot glue and floral tape tohold all the stems and everything ttogether. Now it sits in a vase so it doesn't crush.

price of mine was/is probably a little more expensive than other. I used a lot of vintage flower pieces at about $5 each. I worked for years to collect all the ones I loved (we've been engaged for 6 years). I found filler pieces at joanns on clearance and my mom gave me some of hers and my grandmas. I also found some at goodwill. thel best way to go about collecting pieces is to figure out what centerpiece brooches you want - those should be the biggest and most expensive (mine are the large flowers but if she'd rather have crystal or whatever then those would be the priciest ones). Then she should consider medium pieces which should cost less than her large ones but still a little more than her fillers. After she should consider filler pieces - those are the smaller pieces such as earrings,nts, other cheaper items which could be purchased in large quantities for a decent price. Also she could take a look in her and her mother's jewlery boxes. Look at rings/pendants/her own items that mean the most to her and use those as well. The rest of the cost goes to floral wire and floral tape or Styrofoam ball (depending on her method), ribbon, silk hydrangeas (that should cost 5-10 dollars).

sarahjane222

Mine actually did end up costing quite a bit. It depends on what you've got for resources though - I didn't have a lot of hand-me-down jewelry (and I was picky about the types jewelry I wanted - no colors, only pearl/gold/silver/rhinestone). I made a rule for myself to not spend more than $5/piece but it still added up. So it all depends on what you have available to you for free (or how long you have to collect it - I'm working with just a 5month engagement). 

duhitsd

I used Real Touch roses for the base of mine. Most of the jewelry pieces are not even brooches. I mainly used pendants, beads and buttons. The brooches were more difficult to wire and have them stay straight and not droop. The real touch roses were kind of expensive - $45 with coupons from Hobby Lobby. All together the whole thing was about $100. I spent about 6 months collecting all the jewelry. Most of the stuff I got one or two items at a time from the clearance bins at craft stores. I also set the limit that the highest price I would pay for a single item was $5. I usually was able to find packs of 4 items for under $5 so that really helped. Good luck!

badbnagdway

Just continuing to kind of high jack this thread. 

I have seen pictures of both the styrofoam ball with wood stick approach and the approach involving wire and floral tape. 

What are the positives and negatives on these techniques? 

lookame3639

badbnagdway said:

Just continuing to kind of high jack this thread. 

I have seen pictures of both the styrofoam ball with wood stick approach and the approach involving wire and floral tape. 

What are the positives and negatives on these techniques? 

Styrofoam ball is easier to make then the wire and floral tape, it's basically some glue on the needle of the brooch and pushed into the ball then you put it on some sort of holder and bib it. I don't like the look of this...it's to round and looks to perfect. The floral tape and wire is a little more difficult and time consuming but it has a much more natural look. With this you wire up a brooch (i had FI hold one end while I twisted the other around until it was tight) then wrapped it up with tape.

duhitsd

lookame3639 said:

Just continuing to kind of high jack this thread. 

I have seen pictures of both the styrofoam ball with wood stick approach and the approach involving wire and floral tape. 

What are the positives and negatives on these techniques? 

Styrofoam ball is easier to make then the wire and floral tape, it's basically some glue on the needle of the brooch and pushed into the ball then you put it on some sort of holder and bib it. I don't like the look of this...it's to round and looks to perfect. The floral tape and wire is a little more difficult and time consuming but it has a much more natural look. With this you wire up a brooch (i had FI hold one end while I twisted the other around until it was tight) then wrapped it up with tape.

I agree with PP that the Styrofoam ball looks too perfect in my opinion. There are a ton of pictures online and video tutorials on YouTube that show examples of different styles. I found those really helpful when deciding what I wanted to do with mine.

PrincessOfHavoc

Styrofoam here sounded like Santa's reindeer were high on acid and doing a kick line in flight.

LittleWohlscheid

@PrincessOfHavoc was it just loud while you were making it or did it squeak and make noise when you were moving with it? I heard it's noisy so I went with the wire approach. I didn't want to squeak my way up the aisle.

@badbnagdway The wire approach is a little time consuming, but fairly easy. I've been catching up on shows while I put wire on everything since it's a pretty mindless task. If you use that approach, make sure you double or triple up on wire otherwise it will be floppy.

badbnagdway

LittleWohlscheid said:

@PrincessOfHavoc was it just loud while you were making it or did it squeak and make noise when you were moving with it? I heard it's noisy so I went with the wire approach. I didn't want to squeak my way up the aisle.

@badbnagdway The wire approach is a little time consuming, but fairly easy. I've been catching up on shows while I put wire on everything since it's a pretty mindless task. If you use that approach, make sure you double or triple up on wire otherwise it will be floppy.

What gauge wire did you use? I have ordered a 20 and 22 gauge wire in my desired color but wasn't sure if that was low enough gauge. 

LittleWohlscheid

@badbnagdway I've been using 26 gauge. I've had to use 3 or 4 pieces on my larger jewelry though, so if you're using a lot of bigger pieces you'll probably want something thicker. I would think both of the ones you ordered should work.

PrincessOfHavoc

Styrofoam in small version was squeaky when the foam rubbed, then it didn't hold the brooches very secure so they rattled and jingled if I walked holding them. So I went with wire. The floral bits cushion it, and the wire holds everything tighter. Nice and mostly quiet.