Boutonniere Love How-To

I was so pleased with the response to my boutonniere post -- mostly relieved that everyone seemed to think they were a classy alternative to fresh flowers from a florist!

I got several requests for a DIY tutorial and so I figured that I'd do my best to oblige, despite my initial reluctance because, to be honest, they were mostly trial-and-error! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the process, since I didn't know I'd be blogging about them at the time, but I've tried to be as specific as I can be in my descriptions. And honestly, if I was able to pull this off, anyone can!

To start off, I'll recap my supplies list:

• Purple satin ribbon 3/8"
  
• Guinea feathers (I ended up using 12)
  
• Miniature silk camellias, about 1" across (18)
  
• Black beaded rose
  
• Silver pin backings
  

Also some things I already had in my supplies:

• Purple cardstock
  
• Polka dot satin ribbon 3/8" (from another wedding project to be posted soon!)
  
• Hot glue and gun
  
• Tacky glue
  
• Scissors, of course
  
• Thread or string

To start off, I should probably warn you all that I am the Queen of Hotglue. If something isn't working, I just bust out my hotglue and there isn't much that I can't do! I hope you all share my hotglue love, if not my hotglue blisters. I've included a close-up picture of one of the boutonnieres for reference:

First off, I set about arranging the flowers. I cut all the stems to be separate and removed the leaves. After that, I basically just pushed the flowers around until I could see all three and I thought they looked nice together. My plan was to just hotglue them together at this point and then wrap the ribbon around. This, however, was where I ran into my first snafu: the flower stems were so thin and so plastic that they melted when I tried to hotglue them together.

So instead, I tied the three stems together with thread and used tacky glue to anchor the stems to a little piece of cardstock I cut out that was oval-shaped and about 2" long and 1/2" wide. This way, I was able to create something to hotglue to, which was important to me because (besides the fact that I love hotglue!) hotglue dries much more quickly than tacky glue, making it easier to create aesthetically-pleasing arrangements!

Next up, I wrapped the ribbon around the stems/cardstock. I started by using hotglue to attach the end of the ribbon to the top of the cardstock and wrapped as carefully as I could all the way down the stems and back up, using glue every few wraps as I went (I think two layers of wrapping looks cleaner). NOTE: At this point, I did not cut the other end of the ribbon; I just hotglued it at the top again and left the other end hanging still.

Then I wanted to attach the feathers. Guinea feathers often have a lot of fuzzy grayness at the bottom and I thought that made my bouts messier looking, so I used my cut off all the fuzzy part first. Then I hotglued two of feather shafts and one of the leaves to the back of the ribbon-wrapped cardstock. This is why I didn't cut the end of the ribbon: because at this point, I wrapped the ribbon around the bouts a few more times to cover the feather shafts and leaf stem, and then hotglued the end down in the back and snipped the extra off.

I was planning on leaving them as-is at that point, but they still looked like they needed a little something. So I used a bit of leftover polka dot ribbon from our table number project (post coming soon!) to make little bows. I just tied a piece of ribbon that was about 10" long in the same way that I would tie my shoelaces and if you just wiggle the last loop a bit before you tighten the bow all the way, you can get both loops to have the polka dots facing out! For Mr. Star's bout, I simply hotglued the beaded rose in front of the feathers to give it a little added pizazz :)

Let me know if you still have questions! Like I said, it was mostly trial-and-error, patience, and hotglue!