What A'bout' this?

I know you all are on the edge of your seat regarding the guestbook sequel, but you’re just going to have to wait a little longer!

Buuuut….today, I am going to show off my latest project; button boutonnieres!

I was inspired by a lot of images in etsy of button bouquets and knew I liked that look and wanted to emulate it in a smaller version. So, I melded two online tutorials; one for boutonnieres by Mrs. Green Tea on weddingbee and one for button bouquets on the M&J trim blog and voila! It was a fun, low-cost project that I recommend to anyone =D

Here’s what I used:

• Bag of assorted buttons, purchased at Michael’s 
• Green Floral Tape
• Green Floral Wire
• Scissors
• Needle nose plier (I stopped using it halfway through)
• Cardstock (not pictured)
• Assorted Ribbon (not pictured)
• Glue gun (optional)

First, pick a variety of buttons that fit in your color scheme; I stuck with off-whites, browns and accent blues to match my color scheme.  Then, pick buttons that ‘fit’ next to each other:

Next, cut a small length of floral wire:

From there, string your desired buttons thru, looping the wire thru the top button, pulling tight to ‘divide’ the wire in half.

Then…repeat!  I put about 2-3 buttons on each ‘bloom.’

Once all buttons are strung on the wire, I followed the M&J directions to take the plier and twist the excess wire…but I quickly found that I have HULK-like strength, which snapped the wire.  So, on my next try, I just twisted it by hand, which was fine!  You can see how it’s twisted in the next pic, where you can also see, that like usual, I got really into making these and made a BUNCH!

After making that gaggle of stems, I divided them into six different piles; as I had six ’bouts’ to make…at first, I thought I’d do four stems each, but I quickly found that it seemed a little busy; so I saved the four  stem for the FH and three for the others.  At this point, I adhered to Mrs. Green Tea’s directions, and wrapped two stems together at a time, then cut out leaves from a freehand drawing.

On each third stem, I floral taped it to the cardstock leaf…and as Mrs. Green Tea warned, if you’re not used to Floral Tape…remember two things: it doesn’t SEEM sticky at first, but pull it taut and wrap it tight for the best result!  My fingers got too sticky icky to take a pic at that point.  But!  After wrapping it with the tape, I covered it with ribbon, picking a separate ribbon for each.

I used hot glue to secure the ribbon ends, then used contrasting ribbon to create a bow halfway up the ’bout;’ so each had a different personality:

I was beyond excited how they turned out and this project definitely proved to me that if you cannot find what you want, and you have what feels like too many ideas, the best thing to do might just be throwing it together yourself! =)