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How to…Make Your Own Fabric Bouquet

April 2, 2011 in How To... | 14 comments

Photography Credit: Kristin Rogers Photography

The eagle-eyed amongst you may recognise the above image from Nicole & Aaron’s ‘Just Married’ Session that I blogged back in February. As I was blogging it, I fell a little bit in love with Nicole’s handmade fabric flower bouquet so I thought I’d try my luck and ask her if she’d be willing to share how to made it with my readers. Luckily for me (and you!) Nicole was more than happy and excited to share her tutorial with us. Enjoy this guys and as always, if you make this yourself I want to see pictures!

Nicole has her own blog, Knitcole, so if you are interested in seeing more of her work then be sure to go check it out. The bouquet she made especially for this tutorial is even for sale through her blog (along with others) for the less crafty among you (ahem…like me!)

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I am so excited to share this sweet little bouquet tutorial with all of you! When my husband and I decided to have our wedding photos taken I knew I wanted to have a special element in the photos and my handmade bouquet turned out to be just what I was looking for! I was so happy that I spent the extra time and effort to make something so special that I can look at every day and remember our special moment.

First, get all of your supplies ready. You may not need everything here, but I’ve found that there are all nice to have. Here’s what you’ll need:

1. Fabric
2. Tools: Scissors, Rotary Cutter, Self-Healing Mat, Ruler, Compass, Glue gun with lots of glue.
3. Notions: Felt, Embroidery Thread or Regular Thread, Green Cloth Floral Wire, Buttons, Embellishments.

For this tutorial I decided to make my bouquet nautical themed so I choose a lot of red, blue, white and yellow fabrics and found buttons and some gold rope that made perfect embellishments.

First thing you need to do is create your flowers. I like to use two types of flowers, (Yo Yo Flowers and Ruffle Flowers,) but you can also add any other kinds of flowers; crocheted or knitted flowers, felt flowers, etc.

1. To make Yo Yo Flowers you will need to cut out circles in varying sizes. I like to use a compass so I can make many different sized circles without having to cut out different templates. I recommend circles that are no smaller than 3” in diameter.
2. Using a needle and thread sew around the edge of the circle. You don’t have to be too careful here, just try to stay close to the edge.
3. Continue sewing around the circle, the fabric will gather as you go.
4. Once you get all the way around knot your thread and you’re finished!

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N’tima & Steven’s Love Across the Sea

March 18, 2011 in Wedding | 16 comments

How are your emotions doing today? because I’ve got a wedding to share that will probably make you blub…there is just so. much. love right here!

N’tima & Steven’s love blossomed across the sea. The bride explained, “We lived in Okinawa, Japan when we met. He was 16, I was 14. We were kids. We were neighbours. We both were kinda dating people on & off here in America, so we were just friends.You see, my family had orders to be shipped to California in June. It was April, and Steven and I were starting to get close. We exchanged numbers, and everything moved so quickly after this point. Every day before I moved was spent falling in love with this beautiful boy. Although we denied it, and being together was scary to us. Distance obviously hadn’t worked previously, so we decided we’d be just friends. Everyone around us knew we were ridiculously in love, but we kept telling each other that we had to stay friends.”

“On May 26, 2008, Steven told me that he loved me, and that he would rather ‘try & fail with us, than not try at all.’ So June 6, 2008, I moved away, and we made the distance work for us. We lived through web-cam dates & 17 hour time differences. I visited November of that year, and April of 2009. By the end of 2009, Steven had joined the air force. He was sent to Basic & we lived through letters for 8 1/2 weeks. I visited for his graduation. He was then sent to Tech school across the country for four more months. I visited for Christmas. In January of 2010 he was sent to live 2 hours away from me here in California, completely by chance. How much luckier could we be, eh?”

“In May of this year, he proposed. We were riding the country roads in his 1977 pick up truck. He parked on the gravel road next to where we had carved our names into the bark during a previous visit. It was sunset, and the sun was sinking behind the mountains. He was holding me in the bed of his truck when he started a slew of compliments and promises & seconds later I look down and he’s holding my left hand in his lap with his right & a gorgeous ring with his left. And then he asked me to “please marry him.” I, clearly, and without hesitation, said “yes!”

Their DIY wedding was held at Joseph Smith Memorial Building, Salt Lake City, Utah. N’tima’s Grandpa performed the ceremony and her Grandmother was her matron of honour. She wore a vintage dress which she’d found in a thrift store and her Grandmother altered it for her. She hand-dyed her cute-as-hell peach pumps herself on the hotel stove the day before the wedding and wore these with cream patterned tights which she bought from Target.

I literally can’t get over how awesome and adorable this couple and their wedding are. I am so honoured that I get to share it with you today. Be sure to check out the beautiful video’ too (but get those hankies out – it’s a tearjerker…)

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Cazz & Liam’s Comic Book Geekery Wedding

March 8, 2011 in Wedding | 18 comments

“Everyone said for me to wear white would be the shocking thing” the bride, Cazz, told me. “My dream was to look like a cupcake. A big pink cupcake. It had to be pink, black and with polka dots. My dress was purchased off eBay for $40. It was a used costume from Buddy Holly the musical! One of my lovely maids of honour altered it for me and added my dream large black bow.”

I think that Cazz’s dress might have helped to set the whole theme for her awesome wedding to Liam – a big pink cupcake of a wedding! Cazz wore shoes with cupcakes (and skulls!) on them and as well as a slightly more traditional tiered cake, which was gift, they had…you guessed it…cupcakes!

“The theme turned out to be Rockabilly/Tiki comic book geekery,” Cazz continued. “But in a sense the theme was ‘Liam & Cazz’. I wanted the world to see who we really were. At that time. I don’t care that if i’m 50 and think… “what was I thinking” because it was us. I wanted EVERYTHING that we liked to be represented in some way. All the comics that meant something to us were scattered around, hung in trees and read at our ceremony. Action figures of everything from Marv from Sin City to she Hulk were used as table decorations. Darth Vader attended my wedding and was featured on the bottom of the cake fighting zombies and covered in blood. Tiki stuff was everywhere and pink flamingos were used to represent film director John Waters.”

“I would like to end by saying, I know you hear it a lot; but it really is your wedding day. If your family and friends truly love you, they will get it.. all off it. And even if they are offended, it won’t matter because it’s not about them. I wore pink, had blood and zombies on my cake, had 5 bridesmaids, the dude of honour was a girl, walked down the isle to Kiss and showed all my tattoos. And the one family member I thought would hate it, could not stop saying how much love they felt. ‘Best wedding ever’ they said. And to us… it really was.”

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Kirsten & David’s Folk Wedding

February 28, 2011 in Wedding | 22 comments

Kirsten and David’s beautifully folky, Cape Town wedding is the pure essence of why I love my Rock n Roll Brides. Pretty much their whole wedding was crafted from either second-hand or vintage items, and the majority of the details were hand-made. They had home-made pie instead of a wedding cake and they put together all the centrepieces and flowers (bouquets & bridesmaid’s headbands) themselves. “We pretty much made all the decor, even the tablecloths and runners,” Kirsten told me. “We had so many friends helping us the month before and went a bit overboard with ideas, but it was so much fun! We also made sure (almost completely) that we had finished everything we wanted to do before the last week so that we could spend some good time with all our friends, and made it a big celebration.”

Kirsten wore a second-hand dress that a friend gave her with leather Oxfords on her feet. All of the jewellery she wore was found at various markets and antique stores. For David’s outfit, he went and picked out his own material at a fabric shop with his friends and then they all drove to Mexico (David is from San Diego) and found a cheap tailor to make his suit! “Of course he left this to the week before he moved to South Africa,” Kirsten laughed, “so he only got to see if it fit him the week of the wedding! Mexicans can tailor good!”

The bucking of tradition didn’t stop there. The couple decided to leave the floor open to speeches, to make the whole process more of an organic one. “It was so nice as the wedding felt so spontaneous,” Kirsten said. “We had the oldest man there singing to us, and the youngest man (9) said the next speech.” Finally, instead of a traditional exit, the couple left on a tandem, “little tricky in a wedding dress but was really fun!” said the bride.

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“The Pirate & The Stripper got Married” – Ed & Torie’s Quirky London Wedding

February 24, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding | 10 comments

When Ed & Torie’s beautiful wedding landed in my inbox last week, I was immediately drawn to the bride’s beautiful ensemble – in particular her stunning vintage dress from my favourite girls, Fur Coat No Knickers. The couple were married in November at The  Trafalgar Tavern, Greenwich, London and Torie was keen to tell me all about their quirky and fabulous wedding day,
“On November 20th 2010 I got to marry my best friend, my pirate, Ed. Ed and I met 4 and a half years ago through his workmate / my flatmate at a pirate fancy dress party at our house – hence the nickname. Ed turned up, breathed fire (seriously) and then mysteriously left. As it turned out his appendix had burst and he went home and then to A&E. After recovering we got in touch and the rest, as they say is history.”

“Ed and I got engaged at the edge of the grand canyon (aaww) a couple of days after an American friend of mine got married in Phoenix on Feb 2nd 2010 (a year ago today). Little did I know it but after a ‘couple’ of beverages Ed spent the end of her wedding telling our friends he was going to propose, luckily I was too drunk to notice and so when he produced a HUGE Swarovski crystal surrounded by snakes from his backpack I was suitably dumbfounded. From that moment we promised each other that we’d do it like us. I would look like the best me I could be not like an idendikit bride, we would send invites that we loved, we would do it in a cool venue, we would not dance to Abba but we would dance – complete with knee slides and ties around foreheads.”

“So the plan was, find a great venue and take it from there. We found The  Trafalgar Tavern in London, a pub with a fabulous upstairs area with lots of gold chairs, chandeliers and red velvet curtains, we both have cabaret sidelines (he as a compere, escapologist and fire artist, me as a burlesque stripper) so the wiff of the stage made us fall for the Trafalgar, it had the ‘us’ factor.”

“We also decided early on that we would like to give each other a present. Some of our married friends had given each other jewellery, we decided to give each other tattoos. For years Ed has wanted a full sleeve of a phoenix (the fire thing …) and I’ve wanted something large and floral on the base of my back.  After a painful month or two I now own 2 large chrysanthemums covering my lower back and Ed, well Ed has a pretty fabulous arm, both done by Rodrigo Souto, he’s a fabulous artist and I’m so glad we decided to do it, although it turns out I don’t like getting my spine tattooed much.”

“For us it was important that our wedding was perfect for ‘us’. That meant a wedding that was a little bit Rock n Roll. It started with the invitations which I cross stitched and framed, they were then beautifully designed into invites and RSVP cards by a friend and we asked our guests to nominate songs they’d like to dance to from which Ed made probably the most eclectic wedding playlist ever which promoted much hilarity, dancing, ties round heads and knee slides on the dance floor.”

“Finding my dress was eventually but not always lovely, my Mum is an amazing seamstress and we intended to find something she could copy but I just couldn’t find anything I liked or that worked on my 4ft 10 frame. Then I found Fur Coat No Knickers, I know Kat, you already love those girls, but seriously they made me feel like a star and I cannot thank them enough for pulling me out of the ‘I’m never going to look like me on my wedding day’ panic. I tried on white but it didn’t work and then I fell for this printed number which they added a halter strap too, made smaller (result), made me bound edged petticoats and a floral hair piece to match and made me a little bolero too –it was too hot in the pub to wear the bolero but I reckon without the head piece and with the bolero I might just get away with wearing the dress to a party so that’s the silver lining. Luckily my Mum loved it too and instead of making my dress made me a fabulous black coat to wear over it as outside was distinctly less toasty warm than inside the pub.”

The couple DIY’ed the majority of their wedding décor - from the flowers which they collected from the flower market at 6am; to the candelabras, table centres and large displays that Torie and her army of helpers put together the day before; to the bouquet and buttonholes that they made the morning of the wedding. “My family kept me calm and panic free (sort of),” continued the bride. ”I loved it so much that I have finally set up the business I’ve been promising to own for years, Victoria & Florence, flowers and cakes for every occasion.  World domination (or at least the flower market) here I come.”

“It was such a wonderful day and our friends and family helped so much with emotional support, glasses of wine when needed, order of service folding and generally being fabulous”, Torie concluded.  ”All together it was exactly what we had wanted; a day where we looked like us and felt like us and where our friends and family could celebrate our love and have a good party. Getting married is great but being married is better and if it was a little bit Rock n Roll, all the better.”

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