Saturday Sneak Peek Countdown

Hi there and welcome to another Saturday Sneak Peek.  I have a little something to show you, and I think it's pretty innovative.  As you know, I decided that I would either thrift for make by hand everything for our wedding, coming up this September 1st.  I know that it won't be easy, but I already have a good start on many of the items.  

One of the things I want to do is to make the flowers.  I know that in September, there will likely be plenty of fresh flowers - even grocery store florists have flowers available.  But I need arrangements for six tables, a bouquet, a couple of corsages, and a selection of single stems for another decorative element, as well as enough to put an arrangement or two on the food table.  It's quite a few flowers, and part of the reason I'm doing it this way is that it really is thrifty.  I'll spend a good deal less, as long as I stay on task.  I can spread the cost over months and months --- and it will be relatively low cost, albeit pretty labor-intensive.

There are a multitude of tutorials that can show you how to make organza flowers , so I don't plan to go step by step through that with you.  What I haven't seen is how to set those flowers on a stem.  I need stems to do flower arrangements and bouquets, so I racked my brain and haunted the hardware store until I hit upon the solution.  

Here it is.  It's a wire nut/connector, but it has a hole all the way through the bottom.

Frankly, I'd much rather have had no wings on the nut, but once it's wrapped with floral tape (I'm using dark brown floral tape), it really makes for quite a nice sepal -- the part of the flower that protects the bud.

 Using a plain old needle and thread, I stacked up the petals,

inserted the needle from the bottom of the stack,  strung on four or five beads, 
 

and then went back down through in pretty much the same spot I came up in.  I drew the thread tight, causing the beads to form a circle, and then quickly stitched them in place, between the beads.  

My final stitch went back down through the center of the flower, then through the center of the wire connector.
  

I fed a length of floral wire into the bottom of the connector and fed a bit of hot glue into the top opening of the wire nut, basically making sure that there was enough to contact the bottom of the flower.

Then, after allowing the hot glue to cool and set, I carefully wrapped the stem with brown floral tape. 

Some of these are on wire, and some are on skewers... depending upon where I'll need to use them and whether the stem needs to be stiff or arrange-able.  I have never seen these organza flowers on stems, so I hope that this is helpful to someone else.  I think they're just beautiful.

Love,

Sass

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