MIA Crafter...

So for the last two weeks I have been MIA, but I have a good reason. We have a cousin who got married on October 28th. On the 15th she asked me to make her bouquets, six ribbon flower bouquets - bridal, tossing and four bridesmaid - and I couldn't meet with her until the 17th to actually pick out ribbon colors and discuss what she wanted. Once everything was figured out, I spent the following week and a half doing nearly nothing but sewing ribbon flowers and crafting bouquet embellishments. In all I ended up with around six dozen flowers and two dozen embellishments. 

It was stressful, my whole house suffered and my poor hubby had to deal with nearly two weeks of me being cranky. In the end it was all worth it when I delivered the bouquets and saw the bride's face. She loved them, said they were better than she could have expected even though she knew they would be beautiful. 

So here are three of the six bouquets that nearly cost me my sanity. :) I am very happy with how they turned out. She had a Halloween themed wedding, complete with guests being required to wear costumes (which was more stress considering I had to make a costume for myself as well) and her colors were a rich red, black and white.

Here you can see the bridal bouquet in the vase, the tossing bouquet to the right and the maid of honor bouquet to the left. The only difference between the maid of honor bouquet and the other bridesmaid is the sparkly black pendant set to the front of bouquet. 

The bridal had several accents that made it really stand out. The bride loves sparkly, blingy accents. Knowing that, I crafted some rhinestone accents out of cup-chain with clear stones and silver wire and incorporated a really pretty iridescent ribbon both in the bouquet and circling it. This bouquet really stood out in front of her dress. The bridesmaids bouquets were smaller but made of the same style flowers and accents. They did not get any rhinestones, but they did get some bicone accents in the wedding colors. The tossing bouquet was the smallest of the bouquets but still had some major impact. It was also the biggest pain the neck to make. Probably because it was the last and I was trying to hurry to get everything done to deliver the flowers in the afternoon, the day before the wedding.

I loved being able to do this for our cousin. The joy in her face when she saw them, the surprise when I told her she didn't have to pay and they were her wedding gift. It took a lot of stress off her - especially considering she gave herself a total of 28 days to plan the wedding! Naturally, her big day was beautiful and filled with family and love. And I'm happy to know I had a small part in making the day so special for her.