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Monday, March 21, 2011

A Beautiful (and Easy) Bouquet


This will probably be my favorite thing for my wedding (it is so far). I finally got up the nerve to try making my cotton bouquet. I had to really think about how to do it, because the cotton stems weren’t very long, and bunching them together would make a very small bouquet. So I decided my best bet was to stick each cotton boll into a large styrofoam ball, then somehow attach that to a styrofoam cone to use as the base. Here are the materials I gathered to begin this project:


By the way, the roll of burlap I found at Michael’s is my favorite part. I love it! So first I tried to attach the ball to the base of the bouquet by sticking a needle through the end of the base and pressing it into the ball. Not so sturdy. I underestimated the weight of this thing. So I used a glue gun to try to glue them together…


That seemed to work at first…


…but when I tried to stick in the first cotton boll, I realized I needed something sturdier.


As you can see, each cotton boll is surprisingly large compared to the styrofoam ball I used, and when a bunch are stuck in that thing, it’s actually pretty heavy compared to what I thought it would be. In order to try to stabilize the styrofoam setup a bit, I also tried squeezing all-purpose glue between the two pieces, but that didn’t do much either.


After that I decided I better put connecting the two pieces on hold and think about how to really stabilize it (I may try wooden skewers after reading this post), and in the meantime I kept attaching more and more cotton bolls to my styrofoam ball. It was at this point, about halfway through the project, that my brother suggested I draw a face on it (it does look like a woman in curlers):


But once I got past the funny-looking stage, it turned out amazing! I’m so proud/excited about this thing…that is, if I can figure out how to attach the base. Here are a couple of shots of the finished top of the bouquet:



After struggling with that base, I gave up and balanced it on a similar-sized glass. That worked out quite well. Obviously there are a few spots where styrofoam is trying to peek through, so I will need to stick little pieces of cotton in those places, but for the most part I am pleased with it. I didn’t think mine would come close to the awesome bouquet that inspired it, but I think it’s going to get there.

Since I was so excited about that burlap purchase, I had to try it out on the detached base:


I tried wrapping it a few different ways, and I was happy with all of them. I don’t think you can really go wrong trying to get a rustic look with burlap. This is what I settled on for the time being, because I was able to tuck the end in to keep it in place.

So that’s my bouquet. Yay! One more thing to check off the wedding list.

And speaking of checking things off our list, we started removing the awful green color from our basement! It looks like a very small section, but really we tackled the hardest part first. That brick was tricky to prime. It took two of us, one roller, two brushes, loud music, and a few hours to get through this part, but I have a feeling it’s all downhill from here. Have a look-see (basement photoshoot!):


That brass thing attached to the post is all that was left of the shelves that were hung across the posts in front of the brick by the time I remembered I should be taking pictures of the process. You can use your imagination to picture the beauty that the shelves added (ha!).


Finding this can in all the ash from the upstairs fireplace was very exciting for Tyler...until he realized it was empty.

I think this pictures captures the horrible green color the best.


Still some green showing through after the first coat of primer...


But the second coat really helped.

This side-by-side really shows the contrast between the two colors.

And you can see the huge difference between the posts.

Ahhh, it's so much nicer!

That brick can’t scare us! We’ll be at it again soon, painting the brick with a bright “pop” color. We want to make that basement as cheery as possible. The posts, though, will stay white. And all that white in the basement is making us so happy after the dark green that we had. It’s amazing how it opens the space up.

1 comment:

  1. Kelli-
    Loving the cotton :)
    It is so neat to hear your vision, go with you to Michaels, and watch it come to life on your blog!!! Keep up the great show-and-tell!
    -Molly

    ReplyDelete