DIY your own funky button and bead bouquet

I’ve been meaning to get around to doing a tutorial for ages as I have had so many compliments on my bouquet, so I thought I’d post this so any of you can make one yourself!

I think the end product is just gorgeous! I hope this is helpful for all you DIYing brides and grooms out there… imagine all the color combinations!

Materials:
(approximate numbers for one bouquet)

• One spool of 24 gauge wire
• 50 Swarovski crystal beads in various colours
• 50 Pearl beads
• 30 Mulberry paper flowers
• 15 Guinea fowl feathers
• 50 Buttons of various sizes
• Hot glue and hot glue gun
• Ribbon in coordinating colours
• Sticky tape
• Thick cardstock

Step 1:
Take a piece of wire about the length of your arm, then thread a bead onto it and bend it in half. Then twist so that below the bead is around an inch of twisted wire.

Step 2:
For the two ‘tails’ of wire left dangling, bend them upwards and do the same thing again so that each bead is held up by around an inch of twisty wire. For the smaller feathers and buttons just add them to the spray in place of beads.

Step 3:
Then twist the ‘tails’ together and arrange the beads so that hey spray outwards and still have a stem of twisted wire. Wire any larger buttons or feathers individually to their own stems.

Step 4:
For the buttons, take a smaller button and a larger one, and a little bead. Stack the buttons with the largest at the bottom.Thread the wire through one hole of each button, through the bead and then back through the other holes of the buttons, then twist the tails of wire together to make the stem.

Step 5:
Do this about 100 times until you have what looks like the right number of stems. The bouquet I made has around thirty larger flowers, twenty smaller ones, around thirty sprays of beads, twenty button stems and fifteen feather stems.

Step 6:
Bunch all of the stems together and twist the stems together to hold it all in place. I found it easiest to start off twisting just a few stems together, and then add them a few at a time so I could adjust their positions as I went along.

Step 7:
Once you’re happy with the positions of all of the stems and they are all secure then you can form the handle for the bouquet. Cut a piece of thick card to the right length (around 6 inches) and roll it around the stems. If any poke out of the end then fold them around to secure the card.

Step 8:
Wrap the whole thing in sticky tape to make sure it doesn’t move. Squirt some hot glue into each end of the tube, around all of the stems.

Step 9:
Wrap the handle in coordinating ribbon and stick it down with yet more hot glue, tuck the end into the bottom of the tube with a squirt of glue to hide the messy bit. Tie a few more ribbons around, and you’re done! Finito!