Silk Flowers

If I never see another one again, it will be too soon.

I am currently in the process of cutting the heads off of the thousands of flowers I purchased from http://www.silkflowersfactory.com/.  I'm almost done but my fingers hurt so I am going to try to finish the rest tomorrow and then start making poms again.

Oh, the joys of DIY!

More flowers = more poms

So yesterday I got about $400 worth of silk flowers in the mail.  The next few days will consist of removing the flower heads and then working on more poms.  I have LOTS of styrofoam balls coming in the mail as well so that will give me plenty more work to do.  I'll post pictures of my progress.

Craft Supplies

So I ordered about $400 worth of silk flowers from http://www.silkflowersfactory.com/ which I am waiting to come in the mail.  I also ordered more styrofoam balls on ebay.  Some of them are 5" which will be used for the main centerpieces and then the others are 3.5" which will be used for decoration all over the tables.  I got them from http://stores.ebay.com/seasonaldecorator.  I definitely recommend them.  They ship very quickly and they will combine shipping costs if you buy more than one thing at a time.  The prices are also very reasonable.  If you are making poms, the styrofoam ball is probably the most expensive part of the entire thing and I did the math and even with 1/2 off coupons from Joanns or Michaels, this is still cheaper (even with shipping costs).

Along with the poms for the ceremony and the centerpieces, I was thinking of possibly doing something like this to decorate the cake tables and escort tables:

For the actual centerpieces, I am hoping to do something similar to these:

Shoe Ideas

I have had such a problem trying to figure out what kind of shoes I want to wear on my special day.  I'm a very casual girl and I HATE wearing heels because they are soooo uncomfortable.  I thought about potentially wearing flats but it's going to be hot since we are getting married in August so they would have to be peep-toe.  Then I figure, why not just wear flip flops?  It's what I wear everyday anyway.  But I'm having a hard time finding ones I like that aren't super expensive.  My shoe budget is $50 but I would prefer to spend half of that if possible.  I guess I could buy a pair of white Old Navy flip flops for $2.50 and embellish them.  I've gotten pretty good at using a glue gun lately and my fabric and ribbon flowers are getting much nicer.

First Pomander Completed

So I finished my first pomander.  I got the mini carnations from silkflowersfactory.com and the styrofoam ball from Michaels (with a 40% off coupon of course).  I wanted to try it out and see how they came out so I only bought one.  It was super easy to make and didn't take a long time at all.  I plan on making about 10 of them to hang outside during the ceremony.  I'm also thinking of using them as centerpieces.  It would be a lot easier since it's not using real flowers and I can do them far ahead of time.

The picture I took is the pomander sitting on top of a vase.  I figure I could fill the vase with pebbles or sand/seashells (since we live in Florida) and just sit the pomander on top.  I love the dark purple and I also ordered white and what was SUPPOSED to be lavendar but is more like a pink/purple.  I'm curious to see how the white come out.  I ordered 12 styrofoam balls on ebay for $32. The flowers cost $25 for 250 flower heads.  I used about 1/2 of them.  Ribbon I got at the dollar store and I can use one spool for about 3 poms.  So basically the cost for one pomander is $16.  Not too shabby.  Those would be some cheap centerpieces too.  The florist was quoting me like $50 a centerpiece and I just don't have that in my budget so this would definitely work better.

Bouquets & Stamps

Today, I paid the deposit on my bouquets.  I found someone to make beautiful fabric bouquets for me.  I also mailed my veil materials to Ashleigh and bought stamps for the invitations.  It was a very productive day!



Pomander Flowers are ordered!

So I ordered the silk carnations for my pomanders today at http://www.silkflowersfactory.com/.  I got dark purple, lavendar, and cream ones.  I still need to buy styrofoam balls and ribbon.  The Walmart near our new apartment has an AMAZING craft section so I will probably get the styrofoam balls there.  The ribbon I can get at Dollar Tree.  I plan on using the following tutorial from littlenikki on Wedding Bee (my favorite wedding site).  You can see the tutorial here:  http://diy.weddingbee.com/topic/silk-flower-pomanders-1.  I also found shepherd hooks at Dollar Tree so if I can't tie them to chairs, I can hang them from those.  I am hoping it looks something like this: