Happy Monday hive! If you haven’t already headed over, check out the Weddingbee boards today! We’re live with our Post-A-Thon, and the hostesses, bees, and hive members are hoppin’ on the boards for a full day of great, fast-paced wedding chat! If you’ve been dying to get an opinion on something wedding related, or are just looking to connect with fellow brides, we’d love to see you over on the boards today! The Post-A-Thon officially ends at 1AM EST, so pop in and say hello, and if you’re new, introduce yourself to the hive!

Some hot threads happening now:

• The great stripper debate
• What are you getting your groomsmen?
• Buying a house and planning a wedding
• What to do if you live near one family, but not the other?

See you on the boards!

Remember when I shared with all of you my first attempt at a hair flower? Well, clay was not the right material after I realized how dangerous my head was (I usually poke Mr. Poodle in the eyes with whatever I have in my hair).

So, fabric was a really tempting option. Miss Bear Cub and I wanted to try to make our own, so while I was visiting her (remember our BeeTV?) a few weeks a go, siii! We started playing with cute fabrics, pearls, feathers and beads.

This was our Monday morning project! Um, well… if you remember the amount of Pisco we had the night before (during our BeeTV broadcast), you can guess we were not in the best shape to craft! LOL. I did as much as I could, but I didn’t finish my flower. I left that cutie waiting for me while I researched for the beads and pearls I wanted for the center. And now finally, I’m done!!

{ My finished flower! }

Of course, as always, I wanted to share with all of you how I made mine, just in case you want to make your own.

This was my very first flower, so that means I’m not a flower expert. I try to follow all the instructions I found online, but in the end I just did it my own way and didn’t cut the shape of the flower out of the fabric (like I was supposed to do in Martha’s tutorial). I cut 2 different sizes of petals, starting with (approximately) 3″x2″ rectangles (for the big ones).

{ Not all of the petals are exactly the same size or shape,
I thought it would look more real that way }

After cutting all the petals, we lit a candle and sealed the fabric, just like Mrs. Piglet did in this tutorial.

{ Here you can see the finished shapes }

Once I had all of my petals ready, I stitched through one of the edges and attached the first layer of petals together.

{ Here you can see the petals sewn together. This was the bottom layer. }

I also cut tulle petals, but in this case I didn’t run the edges over the candle, because the tulle burns way faster. I tried several times but I ended up with ugly petals!

{ You can see the tulle petal layer on the left and the next white fabric layer of petals
attached on the right }

I ended up using 5 layers (of 6 to 8 petals each) of white fabric and 2 layers (of 6 petals each) of tulle for the flower.

{ I found some cute white feathers that I sewed to one of the sides}

{ I bought different green and purple beads to attach to the center of the flowers }

I played around with all the beads until I was completely happy with the result. I first tried to just sew them to the flower, but the small ones moved around too much so I ended up hot gluing them to the center. I grabed the beads one by one with tweezers and applied tiny amounts of hot glue to the beads. Then I placed them wherever I wanted them.

{ I used some lilac, purple, and clear purple beads, white feathers, and tulle }

I only have a small idea of how I want my hair that day – Big curls!! So I hope the flower looks better once my hair is all pretty

{ As usual, Curly couldn’t resist the camera – here we both are modeling my flower }

After I finished my flower, I decided to try and make flowers for my girls. I know my MOH wanted one for her hair and my little sister wanted one for her dress, so I started playing around again—this time with purple fabric and green beads.

{ I used some leftovers from one of my last projects }

{ This time I used different colors and sizes of green beads }

I still need to iron these flowers to shape the petals a little bit more, but I am going to do that once the flowers and dresses travel all the way to California, because otherwise, I’ll end up having to iron twice. I’ll use this small iron that I bought that on my first trip to the USA. It’s so small and handy.

I also made another one with a different center so they can have a variety to choose from.

I’ve notice that brides are going crazy over hair flowers these days! Did you jump on the hair flower bandwagon? Are you DIYing yours? What materials did you use?

Our fingers are sore but we can finally say we have made enough poms to decorate our chapel! Yay! We still have to make a million more, but at least the chapel is checked off. Our plan is to ship them to PA folded, and fluff them out before the big day.

So far, our chapel’s coordinator has found all of our plans for the wedding to be very strange. Like asking for a random half hour outside the church to do first looks early in the day. Or even dreaming of playing recorded music instead of live music in the chapel. I can imagine when she sees that I wrote “making paper poms” under floral arrangements, she’ll be raising her eyebrows!

Last time we visited the chapel I was sure to count the number of pews and examine how decorations could hang in various places. Here is the plan and an example of quick and dirty Photoshopping:

• Paper pom garland hanging on either side of the altar.
• One or two poms (maybe a big and small) hanging on every third pew to decorate the aisle, unless I get a second wind and make enough for every second pew.

I bought some 1″ ivory ribbon, purchased at half-price ($8) for the entire roll, that I’m planning to hang the aisle poms from. There was in issue about how these would actually hang, since there is no apparent way to hook or wrap them on to the pew ends. My plan is weigh the opposite end of the pom down with sand and a balloon. I know, super classy, but it’s the best idea I’ve come up with so far and I am open to suggestions! It just has to be quick and easy, since it’s up to our DOC and bridal party to get the decor up before the ceremony. No plan yet when it comes to what we’ll do for the exterior doors of the church. Wreath? Pom? Initials? Who knows.

Now that I see our interior plan all laid out, I feel like the altar is yelping for two vases of flowers to be set on it. Needs a little somethin’ somethin’ up there. And maybe red pom garlands instead of white in the front. Sigh… decisions.

How are you decorating your ceremony space and who will be getting it all set up? You? Your florist? Some special helper fairies?

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Q. Are you the one who will be videotaping my wedding?

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