I can't claim originality on this one; the Weddingplans Livejournal community was one of my favorite sources of inspiration when I was planning, and the best idea that came out of that was raelja's fireflower bouquet!
She made these for her wedding at San Diego Comic Con, and being a huge gaming nerd, I couldn't resist! Luckily she was very generous and let me steal her idea completely.
Even if you don't want to nerd out completely, this can be a great tutorial on how to make your own bouquets out of artificial flowers!
Supplies:
- Red and blue daisies (artificial) from Floral Supply Syndicate / Michaels / JoAnns / etc
- Wirecutters (to cut the stems to length)
- Leaves (artificial - if you can find ones with wires in them, it will make your life MUCH easier)
- Rubber bands, floral tape, ribbon & pins (to wrap the stems)
- White foamies (craft foam for the flower centers)
- Design Master Floral Spray in yellow and blue (flower centers - I used floral spray so it wouldn't stiffen the flowers. Normal paint is stiff & inflexible)
- Wall Pops! low-tack sticker paper (I was using these on glass for the centerpieces, so I wanted something low-tack. If you have no intention of disassembling it, then you can just paint it directly on)
- Feathers (I lined the bridal bouquet with feathers to differentiate it, and make it fancier)
- Glue
Red and aqua were my wedding colors, and to my relief (nerd alert) the new Super Mario Bros Wii introduced the concept of the ice flower. This solved my problem of being able to incorporate the both colors, as well as differentiate the bridal bouquet.
Instructions:
1) Cut the flowers to length and spray paint the centers yellow and blue accordingly. Alternatively, you can use two different colored foamies, just like the original inspiration bouquets. I chose to spray paint for more "realism"... well, as real as flowers with eyeballs can be!
2) Cut the foamie in a circle, one for each flower. cut the black stickers for eyeballs and stick them on.
3) Glue the foamie to the flower center. The surface won't be completely flat, so focus the glue on where the foam and flower contact, and find some sort of weight to hold them together as they dry.
4) Rubber-band the flowers together. Bend the wires in the flower stems so that the flowers face outwards as desired - I used 5 flowers for the outside circle, and one facing directly up.
5) Cut the leaves and pull them through the stems & rubber bands and arrange until they're pretty. I did not get leaves with wires in them, so my genius roommate attacked them with her hair curler on low heat to bend them. Without that, they were sticking up in the most unattractive way!
5.5) For the bridal bouquet, my roommate didn't use leaves and just used the feathers instead in the same manner, without the curling iron.
6) Wrap floral tape around the stems firmly. Then wrap your ribbon around the stems, inserting pins straight through to hold it in place. Make sure the pins are snug; you don't want to have them slip out of place and stab your bridesmaids! (The reference picture below isn't indicative of the bouquet stems - my bridesmaid is hiding an extra ribbon for the ceremony surprise)
All done! Your wedding has achieved nerd status!
