DIY: Flower Power

I've been really inspired by flower accessories lately. I am already going to wear a flower in my hair, so I didn't want to add any more flowers to my outfit, but I thought it might be nice to give some flower accessories as thank you presents. I hope to come up with a different flower accessory for each of my bridesmaid, but that might be too ambitious. I started off with a present for the flower girl and junior bridesmaid. I decided to make a flower headband for both of them because it seemed like an easy project and I had most of the materials. Here is an inspirational picture:

http://www.jcrew.com/

I had some left over white petals from making my hair flower and I picked up two headbands at the dollar store. A before picture of the headbands:

 

I used about 3 petals for each headband and decided against sewing the petals together. I grouped the petals with the smallest one in front and then hot glued them together. The petals were laying flat, so to make them more flower-like, I bunched the sides in until it looked right, then I hot glued the folded parts to hold the petals up. Once the flower looked right, I hot glued it to the side of the headband and was done!

It only cost me $2 to make two headbands, I hope Olivia and Sarah like them!

How Sweet It Is

Long before Will and I were engaged, I went to the Asheville Farmer's Market and saw the cutest little jars of honey. I showed my mom the jars and told her that I thought it would be so cute to give out jars of honey as favors at my future wedding. My mom replied that there was no way she was going to put honey in that many jars. Fast forward one year and now Will and I are engaged. I am discussing wedding favors with my mom and the honey idea comes up again. This time she seems a lot more interested and willing, so we start to develop a plan.

My grandfather was a beekeeper and sold his honey under the name Wayah Mountain Honey. After he passed away, my mom moved to the mountains and took over his beekeeping. She also joined the beekeepers club and through that was able to order little honey jars at a discount. Honey is produced in July and August and doesn't really go bad. So instead of being super rushed and trying to get the favors together at the last minute, we decided to use last year's honey. We were actually really lucky because my mom started new bees last year and usually bees don't produce enough honey the first year. Also, there is a serious honey bee parasite going around and somehow my mom's bees weren't affected!

Over Christmas, Will and I spent a few days pouring all the honey in the jars. Then we put on labels I designed with "How Sweet It Is" and hang tags (from Big Lots!) that were stamped with our monogram and wedding date. Here are the final products, we have two types of honey for our guests to choose from:

DIY: Fascinator

I have never wanted a veil. I think that they block your view and just get in the way, especially if its windy. A veil would not work for my outdoor wedding. But I did want something in my hair, so I started to dream about a fascinator. I have no idea why they call a hair flower a fascinator, but I'm going with it.

This is the fascinator that I feel in love with:

Source

But at $60, I couldn't justify buying it. Thankfully, my obsession with wedding blogs paid off! There are tons of guides on how to make a fascinator and it looked pretty easy. After a quick trip to AC Moore, I had a white flower that looked like it had potential and it only cost $2.

One boring Saturday, I set out to make my fascinator! I followed this tutorial pretty closely. I just detached the flower petals from the stem and arranged the loose petals until I liked the way it looked. Then I loosely arranged some pears that my roommate had leftover from another project and sewed them in place. I also sewed on a barrette that my roommate wasn't using anymore and finished by putting a little hot glue between each petal layer so the flower wasn't so floppy. I love the way it turned out and it only took $2 and about 30 minutes!

 

Front View

 

 Side View

My first DIY!

I love pomanders. And I have two cute girls in my wedding, so I knew I had to make pomanders for them to carry. I looked forever online to find daisies that weren't super expensive. I ended up getting these from Save On Crafts for $5.99 for 72 flowers. I really liked the ones from Save On Crafts because they had detachable heads and I had no desire to cut all the flowers off the stems. I ordered two bunches to use on the two pomanders and a flower R that I want to do for our reception.

Source

Once they came, I made a trip to Michaels and managed to find the cutest yellow polka dot ribbon in the $1 bin! My roommate Amanda and I actually took every spool of ribbon out of that bin trying to find another polka dot one, but had no luck. I also picked up one four inch styrofoam ball and one three inch styrofoam ball. My flower girl will be 4 and my junior bridesmaid will be 9, so I wanted them to have different size pomanders.

As soon as I got home from Michaels, I busted out the glue gun. I followed this tutorial, so I won't repeat all the instructions but I did modify a few things. I put the ribbon in the styrofoam ball before attaching the flowers. To do this, I cut the ribbon to the size loop I wanted, then I knotted the end. I used a screw driver to make a hole in the top of the ball, filled it with hot glue and then stuck the knot in. After I put the ribbon on, I just took each daisy, stuck it in the styrofoam ball to make a hole, then removed the daisy, filled the hole with glue, and the stuck the daisy back in. I kept doing that until the entire ball was covered. My roommate Amanda then tied the bows and we hot glued them at the base of the ribbon handle. I think I used a little over one bunch of daisies to do both pomanders and it took me maybe 20 minutes. Here is the finished product!!

(Personal picture)