Making a Brooch Bouquet - Fastening the Brooches

a few brooches (and an earring) from my bouquet

Now that you have your brooches gathered, it's time to start the fun (you were able to do that in one weekend, right!?)!  To get started, I would suggest wiring all of the brooches first and then placing them individually - that way you can lay them all out and see what you like together.  If you are anything like me you just won't be able to wait that long...I wired a few and started sticking them on the Styrofoam since I was SO excited to get started :)  It was a fun but ineffective method, as I ended taking them all off anyway and starting over once they were all wired.  Oh well, you live and you learn.

To wire the brooches I used floral wire that I already had on hand, but you can find this at any craft store.  Mine was green, which wasn't a big deal since you don't see it anyway, but silver would be just fine if you're worried about it.  Be careful when picking out your wire, because they come in various gauges (thickness) and if you get it too thin it will just bend when you try to push it into the Styrofoam.  It looks like this:

Each brooch will take it's own wiring technique.  The two most important factors to me were:

one: the brooch doesn't fall off on my wedding day

two:  the brooch is left in it's original, undamaged state (no glue, holes, etc)

Here is an example:

wired brooch

    Originally I covered each wire in white floral tape because I thought it might show, but I quickly realized that it didn't matter so I ended up skipping this step on most:

white floral tape covering the wire

This is a time consuming step, but I was able to really enjoy it and feel very sentimental as I handled and got to know each separate piece.  It's easy to be in a happy, relaxed mood when you're working with such beautiful things!

As fillers for my bouquet, I used rick-rack flowers and fabric flowers that I will explain in my next post.  The rick rack flowers look like this:

rick rack flowers

The best part is coming soon - once the rick rack flowers are finished you get to put it all together!  Here is a preview picture:

adding brooches, earrings, and rick rack flowers

Start working on that wire!  As I said before, it's a time consuming step, but one you can't skip.  It will be well worth the work!

Have you made a brooch bouquet?  I'd be interested to learn about other techniques that people have tried and loved!  Please feel free to share.

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