Vintage Brooch Bouquets - How To Guide

So, amazingly the most popular post on my blog is about the vintage brooch bouquet I made for my wedding.  

I really must take some better shots of this.  As I mentioned in my previous post I took the bulk of it apart for our wedding reception so it could be used to top our simple wedding cake.

I thought it may be handy for anyone who is planning to do something similar if I put together a how to guide to help you create your very own vintage brooch bouquet.

Materials

Needle nose pliers

Cutting pliers

Good quality scissors

Fishing wire

Jewellery wire

Ribbon

A good selection of brooches, buttons and beads.

The most time consuming part of making the bouquets is sourcing the materials.  Scour flea markets, yard sales and Ebay for brooches that fit the colour palette and style you are looking for.  Make sure you get a good selection of sizes and lots of beads and buttons to fill up the gaps.

When you have all your materials, lay out your brooches on a flat surface into a circle, this way you will find which positioning you like and you can move the brooches around.  I find a large brooch in the centre works well as a focal point.

Take each brooch and start fixing them together with the jewellery wire.  Make 'flower stems' with the brooches with wire so you can bunch them together.  You need to think like a florist, the brooches are simply replacements for flowers!  Try and hide the wire as much as possible and if pieces will be seen use the fishing wire to secure the brooches in place.  Fill in any small gaps by making little 'flower' stems out of buttons and beads that you can pop into the gaps.  When you have the bouquet to the size you like (I often start out with intentions of making a large piece but stop when it is smaller as it just looks 'right' - you will get a feel for this as you are making it), wrap some more wire around the stem pieces to secure everything together.  Tuck small pieces of fabric, ribbon or lace in any gaps or to bulk out any flimsy sections.  Then wrap a long piece of ribbon around the stem of the bouquet to hide all the wire and make it nice to hold.  You could also find a small plastic florists bouquet holder and attach the wire to this to give a more sturdy base.  A few of these come with florists foam in them so you could tuck all the pieces of wire into this to secure.

I hope this all helps.  I sort of plan as I am going along as every bouquet is different.  Just do what feels right as you are constructing the bouquet.  Remember if you add too much you can always take pieces out.  I personally like the bouquets to be as full as possible.  But I am a huge fan of anything shiny!

If you need any more advice at all, please feel free to email me!