Tissue Paper Flowers

You know those paper tissue paper flowers we would make as children? I revisited them recently and was incredibly (and pleasantly) surprised. I am a tissue paper collector and just combined patterns I thought would be pretty together.

What's great about these as a DIY flower is that they are abundant. A lot of the fabric and paper flowers that I make are detail in focus and actually don't take up much *space.* Really abundant feeling flower arrangements do the opposite. The tissue paper flower is full and expansive. It also isn't horribly intimidating, which is great when you're asking your friends to help.

Great places to find tissue paper. For individual: Paper Source & The Container Store. For bulk: All Express, Bags & Bow : Gold Stripe upper left, Red Damask, Mimosa, Black and White dots.

Mignonne Handmade

Why don't we live in a place (or time) where people are wearing pieces like this ALL THE TIME?! This is the lovely work on Mignonne Handmade. Their Etsy shop and website are beautiful.

Falling Flowers

I'm pretty sure these are paper flowers. They could be a large punch. They could be hand cut. These are things I don't know. What I do know is that that is basically a whole of of awesome, and the next time I'm taking over my parents' house for a part outside, these (hopefully punched) bad boys shall be hanging from some barn somewhere.

Photographer: Dekuji (this means "thanks" in Czech!)
Couple: Mel and Forrester
Via: Ruffled
Lilly Easter Backdrop Tutorial (So I'm guessing Mel used fake flowers. So great!)

Book Vases (via DIY Bride)

Terri and Adam put some sweat into this wedding and what a lovely outcome! I love the challenge of centerpieces and I would have loved to have been a guest at this wedding.

Photography by Edyta Photography.
Via DIY Bride.

Paper Leaves (via Once Wed)

Hello paper leaves. The bride (and um paper artist), Katrine, and her mother made a bunch of these to hang up in their tent and between two trees for photos. Awesome.

Photography: Jim McGinley  -+-+-+- Via: Once Wed

Paper Flowers Galore (by Jes and Caleb)

Need I say more? Yeah.

Oh right but I will. Normally I write where the wedding came from like via Ruffled (as this one did) but this was one of those weddings that was put on by actual people. Not a team of professionals for a single magazine shoot or by another team of professionals for a wedding of the year 300 person beauty gig.* People. With hands. And a whole lotta style.

It's just nice to see.

Photography: For you Love Me Photography

*And um, I love the ones that are put on for magazine shoots and $50,000 too.Yeah!

Tuesday's Bounty

(Bounty seems like strong word. More like the source of my currently very very tired forearms.)

All right. Red wine? Check. Painted test vase? Check. Stash of hot glue? Check. Hot glue gun and scissors? Check. Hours and hours to make 15 tulle half poms? Hell yeah check!

Ruffle Belt (Via Rachel of Heart of Light)

I need to start getting to work on dress alterations. I'm having mixed feelings about some of the things I want to try. I need to get advice but I'm a little worried I look like a fool, which makes me both need advice but also worried about getting it. :)

Something like this belt could work really well as a ruffly strap. This is the clever work of Rachel from Heart of Light blog.

The flower construction is similar to a type I've been doing for bouquets.

(Via 100 Layer Cake)

1 2 3 4

1. The messiest part of our giant wonderful bookshelf. No really the other 4 columns are tidy. Really. REALLY!

2. Lovely artwork by one of Z's talented friends Lori McKee. (She also has some super cool pendants based on her paintings.)

3. Wisteria! I'm so excited! The branch is from awhile ago and I love it but now I'm making wisteria to hang from it. The second one in from the right is the style I'm going for. I've made two more and am learning how to do it better each time. They are stylized. Really wisteria is much lighter than this. But I'm still excited.

4. A pile of wedding trial flowers.

(click to enlarge)

Cupcake and Tulle Paper/Fabric Flower (by Me)

While in Portland on Saturday I saw two versions of the cupcake wrapper flower. One with straight cupcake and one with what may have been dyed coffee filters. The more straightforward white flowers were in an adorable indie store and the others Anthropologie. On the way south, Z and I stopped in a craft store and I bought cupcake wrappers to experiment. Here's what I came up with. I added some tulle in mine to give it fluff. I like it! I made a few more and like them too. (Yay!) Now I need to just figure out what wall I want white flowers to climb up.

Jennifer and Bill (via OnceWed)

I love the yellow checkered paper. (Especially love that there are two types.) Also, this flower is exactly the kind I'm trying to replicate through cardboard. Because the technique uses cardboard it'll never be as delicate as these appear. I suppose I could try the same technique out of tissue paper but it'd be so time consuming that I'd never complete anything.

Beautiful wedding of Jennifer and Bill.

Photography by Jesse Leake.

(Via Once Wed)

Paper Flowers (via Brooklyn Bride)

I know pictures are very different than the thing itself, but sometimes wedding pictures really convey a mood of the event. I love these from Amber and Joe's. Innitally, it was the paper and fabric flowers that caught my eye but the whole thing really is lovely. Fantastic photography by Jenny Ebert (whose blog I may have to bookmark :)

(Via Brooklyn Bride)

Paper Flower (by Jessica Murnane)

This wouldn't work for the style we're having but I still think it's so clever!

The Country Living site has a ton of great stuff (I love Christmas. *sigh*)

This design is by Jessica Murnane via Oh So Beautiful Paper.

Craft Night Success

This Saturday was the first craft night and how awesome are my friends and family?! Everyone did really great. Really. Great. They had ideas on how to make the projects more efficient (I took notes) and did a fabulous job on projects that include a lot of cutting, wire twisting and hot glue gunning.

They also had very nice things to say about the center pieces so it's nice to have affirmation on those.

The next craft night is in January and will be a longer one. It will also be the night of invitations. But for now, my focus is switching into non-weddingy things. Until Dec 27th I am play focused and wedding concerns are background only. But watch out, come Dec 28th, I'm going to be in machine mode. Can't wait!

Green Ribbon Explosion

These are the Container Store ribbon I will be buying in loads come Saturday. Eeek!

I'm so excited to have a focus. It looks like craft night will have about 6 of us including me. That's fantastic! Now I'm trying to figure what we should try and get accomplished. I only have so many tools so instead of all of us doing one thing, each person may be doing a different part of one project or a different project completely. I also have to take into account how hard something is. I'd rather not have everyone go home frustrated or with singed fingers. (Although some hot glue burning *is* inevitable. Sorry.)

Mostly I'm just really looking forward to seeing everyone and sharing the ideas I've been working on.

Counting down the days!

Try 2

Here's the exact same table with a slightly less full bouquet. I think fuller is better. And while I still haven't totally figured out how to design the bouquets...at least I know where I'm headed will work fine.

We have a winner?

Just in time for craft night? Thank you Ms.A for the help this weekend. This is the mock up bouquet for the reception tables. (Click for a larger view.)

The table clothes will probably be a chocolate brown instead of the purple and the square in the middle won't be salmon most likely. But each table may have a different square of color and the bouquets will have different arrangements. I like the idea of every table just being slightly different.

I am going to spend so much money on brown floral wire. Good lord.

Fabric Flowers (by EmersonMade)

I love EmersonMade. They do a fine fine job of fabric flowers. Lovely!

Yellow Flower (by MaiharDesign)

I really do hope that the fabric flower thing stays around for awhile. Tonight on the SanFran bus I saw a girl wearing a headband with feathers on it. Not sticky up but sleek and chic. Sooo wanted to squeal with delight but didn't want to come across, you know, crazy.

This canary yellow delight is by MaiharDesign.

(Found via WeddingChicks.)

Pink Bag Possibilites (inspired by Adrian Kondratowicz)

This is from an installation piece, AnyColorYouLike, by artist Adrian Kondratowicz. Looking at these bags though it makes me wonder what you could make using giant patterned plastic bags. Giant flowers perhaps? So does that mean you could take something relatively inexpensive and bendable like large white plastic bags, spray paint them, and then make them into giant flowers? Hmm? Hmmm...

(Via: Oh Joy)