Paper flowers and hand made bouquets

When I was fortunate enough to be witness at the marriage of one of my awesome friends, Mrs C, she had the most amazing bouquet. It was made from paper flowers which featured sheet music on them, as a nod to her love of music and many musical talents. 

As fate would have it, I caught her throw away bouquet at the wedding. What can I say, I am quite competitive when it comes to the bouquet toss :) 

Catch of the wedding day, well, other than Mrs C :) 

But other than the superstition that comes with catching the bouquet, I came away from the wedding with complete adoration of her bouquet and knew exactly what my bouquet would feature if I ever walked down the aisle again. 

With this in mind, I hit Etsy to find an appropriate bouquet, and while beautiful, they were asking more than what I was willing to pay. 

I was willing to spend the time to be able to create my own bouquet, but first I needed some good information or templates on making my own paper flowers. Here I found Pinterest to be the best source of information, tutorials and links. 

After I had a Bex and a lie down, being so overwhelmed with results, I firstly tried the paper flower tutorial on The Casual Craftlete  which was really easy, and I loved the modern, minimalistic look of them. But after determining the theme of the wedding, I decided I wanting something which mimicked a rose more, so experimented with the Capitol Romance tutorial, minus the water colour. 

To say I was thrilled with the results is an understatement. The only problem is that I need a LOT of flowers to make both my bouquet and the throw away bouquet. Of the many traditions we are snubbing at our wedding, the bouquet and bouquet toss are not two of them. 

I am using a combination of Wonder Woman comics and metallic paper from Office Works. The brads which feature in the middle of each flower is from Spotlight, so I am stoked to be able to incorporate two of my favourite stores into the construction of the flowers.  :) 

A sneak peek of my bouquet

Using the same method I have created The Flash's boutonniere, and will create these also for the Mini Moos using a yet to be determined comic or theme.

Don't get me wrong, it has not been particularly easy, nor at times enjoyable. But as I have had many months to do this, by making a few flowers each week, I have been able to create my bouquet and the throw away bouquet for approx $80 (AU) as opposed to spending approx $250 for my paper flower bouquet alone if I had purchased it from Etsy. 

As with all of my DIY stuff, I will keep it at this for now, but after the big day, I will be sure to post a STACK of pics so that you can see how it all worked out in the end.