By Outreach and Operations Associate, Lisa Seyfried
I’m planning a DIY wedding in a few months, and one of the crafts we decided on was to make all the flowers. Instead of having real flowers that will surely wilt in the August heat, or pretending that our flowers were real when they were really fake, we decided to just scrap it all and announce it!
I found a whole slew of instructions and patterns on Pinterest, but I found this pattern to be the easiest, and the prettiest looking. And the great thing is that this pattern allows you to print out the flowers on any paper you’d like, in any size, cutting out the need to trace anything!
Printed patterns on colored cardstock
Cutting out all those petals takes a really long time. I found it’s best to cut out a bunch of flowers at one time, so you can put them all together without having to stop and cut out more petals.
The instructions are really easy to follow – cut out the flowers, curl the edges, then glue onto a piece of wire about 12 inches long. I’ve been using hot glue to glue them on. I was afraid that the strings from the glue would get all over the bouquets, but it has been pretty easy to just get a drop on there and not have big clumps of glue all over.
The beginning of gluing the flower together. You can see the scraps in the background!
I really love the way these came out. I think they are bright and sturdy and catch the light really well. Against the bright colors of the women’s dresses, these flowers will really stand out.
I’ll be covering the “stems” with ribbon and a few beads to hide the edges. I’m thinking about making the men some kind of pin on flower that is similar, but we’ll see if I can find a great pattern for that!
What I think I love most about these flowers is that they will last. I’ve made a few out of recycled paper (mostly old grad school papers!) and they came out really lovely looking. And they will stand out among the several bouquets that I’m sure people have from other weddings – at least I save them all!
The final bouquets!
