Getting Crafty

My sister in-law is getting married this week and I'm privileged to be one of her bridesmaids.  As one of my duties, I made the bow bouquet for the rehearsal from the bows and ribbons from the gifts from one of her showers.  Since she is registered at Pottery Barn, there were a bunch of beautifully wrapped gifts from there all sporting the same sage green grosgrain ribbon and silk flower embellishment.  And that is about where I started to get carried away...

All the ribbons, flowers and bows matched.  They seemed far too fun to just tape them on a paper plate.  So I had to do something pretty with them right?

I started with making the white ribbon into ribbon rosettes by hand stitching them and I thought they came out super cute.  All I had to do was to gather and circularly attach one side of the ribbon and a rosette was born.  I think I was a little too proud of myself for being able to do it even though my hands hurt from the fibro pain after a little while with it but it was a small victory in crafty-ness for me.

I used a Styrofoam ball and wooden dowel to make the form of the bouquet and started by hot gluing the green ribbon over it. 

I wired the ribbon with florist's wire to stick into the Styrofoam.  Yay for needle-nose pliers!  These ended up being my must-have tool since my fingers were getting raw from twisting the wire and then forcing the ends into the Styrofoam until I realized that the pliers could grip it for me.  Revolutionary.  The long green ribbons ended up looking really fluffy and foliage-like as I tucked the loops around the "flowers".

At this point, I started to get excited since it actually looked like a bouquet and not just a mess of ribbons and bows.  My fear that this would turn out to be an embarrassing wad was beginning to look like it might have been unfounded.

I wrapped the dowel "stems" with another ribbon, added a charm that was on one of the gifts, and tied a bow.  This was all held together with pretty much all the glue that my glue gun came with when I purchased it.  So, if a little is good and more is better, then all of it has to be the ideal, right?  I think I got a little heavy handed with it but there was no way I wanted that thing to fall apart after spending hours working on it.  And what is more, my sister in-law loved it when I gave it to her early since my boys were taking a keen interest in it.  I think they thought that it looked like a great alternative weapon to battle with instead of only light sabers.  While I was being crafty, they were trying to figure out how to destroy things; there is a profound difference between girls and boys.

Happy crafting!