I decided to make a brooch bouquet because I think they are amazing and what an awesome memory of your wedding or vow renewal
From here
Beautiful right?
With That being said this is a long process. I have decided to use a tutorial from Fancy pants wedding that a friend showed me.
I decided to start with step 3(sorta). I haven't collected all my brooches yet, so it seemed silly to me to start with step one.
Step One:
To start you will want to get all of your supplies.
You'll need a plate or a bead funnel tray (I used a Styrofoam plate we had)
Beading wire. (I bought 8 yards of 2 gauge wire in silver.) I cut three, 3 foot pieces. (you can do more but I wouldn't reccommend doing any less)
Scissors or wire cutters
Beads in any color you would like (I chose pink. My favorite!) I needed 3 of the little bottles. One covers about a 3 foot piece of wire and thats with the beads that wouldn't fit on the wire. You will want to have a few inches on each end of the wire. What my bead bottle says is beader seed beads round 12/o I got them from craft wearhouse.
A flat surface. (I have used my table and a tv tray)
A plastic baggy (I used a snack size one.)
Floral tape
And a good show or even series. (This gets boring really quick so I turn on netflix while my daughter is napping or in her high chair and work on this)
My baggy, beads and plate
My wire... and Minnie Paws
My show of choice!
Step two:
Start beading. You'll wanna start by cutting your wire in what ever length you want. I did no less than 3 feet. After you cut your wire you're gonna wanna look over it and make sure there is no kinks in it. If there is you can do what I did (lazy status) and cut another piece or you can follow This to straighten it out. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PUSH YOUR BEADS OVER THEM. YOU WILL BREAK THEM!!!! (Can you tell that I did that?)
After you have looked it over you are going to want to make a way for the beads to stop. I chose to make a little hook like thing
After that you can start beading. I made lines of beads and would help them move down to make sure they didn't get stuck some where.
Continue beading until all the beads are on all the wires. You need to do this 3 times.
Step Three:
Breathe and maybe have a drink.You're done with the beading. Admire your work.
This is about what they should look like
Step Four:
Make the petals. This part was hard for me. The gathering wasn't hard, the taping was. Start by Taking one end of the wire and bending it in to the shape of petals. Once you have the petals gathered I suggest taking wire and wrapping it around them at the bottom to hold them together.
Like so. It doesn't have to look pretty because it will be covered when it is all put together.
Once you get that done you will want to put the handle on. I took a piece of wire about 6 or so inches long. (Not all of my handles are the same length) and folded it in half. Then I took the top of the "handle" and put it up through the wire holding the petals together and folded them down to make hook like things. (Like above)
The next thing I did was taping. I started at the top and taped very tightly. You'll want to cover half of the tape from the row before. I retaped the top of these after I finished. You'll want to go all the way down to the bottom of the handle.
Step five:
Step back and enjoy your final work
If you need any help or any steps explained let me know.
