Bouquet Assembly: Take 2

Had my crafty Play Date with my friend Tree, and let me tell ya, she is a whiz.  She took apart the sad button/brooch bouquet with nary an emotional outburst, and started back in on the reconstruction post-haste.

After about 30 minutes, had a decent-looking collection of stems wired up.  Slight variation on the "use fake hydrangea's as a base" technique: twisted the wire stems around the hydrangea under-foliage to better secure them and prevent them from sliding about willy-nilly.

brooch bouquet under-structure

Also, kept twisting the wires around the stem all the way to the end (instead of trying to hold them straight in a bunch).

brooch bouquet stem (under construction)

This is so much more secure.  The brooches and button-towers are pretty immobilized, even though fewer than half of them have been placed so far.


Pros:

• don't have to twist each individual stem's wires down to the ends
• don't need floral tape until the end
• brooches can't slide around within the arrangement
• actually easier to thread the stems into the arrangement

Cons:

• takes more than 2 hands

However, I still think I am going to take this version apart.  I like the technique, but I want to tweak things a bit.

Too much hydrangea; it's hiding the bling

My main complaint is that the overall shape has strayed too far from oval/round, and the hydrangeas seem to be swallowing up a few of the stems.  I don't want to lose sight of any of my carefully crafted lovelies!

Phew, good thing I started this project so early...