Letterpress Wedding Invitation Blog

Once I had my colors and location selected, I started thinking about décor for the ceremony and reception.  Chris and I have decided that we want a pretty short ceremony, 20 to 30 minutes at most.  With that said, I didn’t want to spend a ton of our budget on decorations for the ceremony, so I decided to come up with something that I could do on my own.  Enter Weddingbee, a wedding blog where there is a ton of inspiration and DIY ideas.  A lot of the girls were using tissue paper pompoms, which I liked, but we live about 18 hours by car from our wedding location, and even my mom’s house is a 2 hour drive, so I was nervous they would be crushed if we used tissue paper.  Finally I came upon this post, where another bride used tulle to do them.  I was intrigued and decided to do a test run.  I basically used this tutorial, but I will walk you step-by-step through what I did.

First, I purchased my supplies.  I bought a 5-inch white Styrofoam ball, a few yards of navy ribbon, 7 yards of pink tulle, some silver beads (more on these later), 22 gauge floral wire, and then I also used a hot glue gun, a measuring tape and a pair of scissors that I already owned.

To start, I made a hole through the center of the ball.  I did this using an unsharpened pencil, but I’m sure anything of that sort would work.  After I made the hole to my liking, I used the pencil to push the ribbon through.  Then I tied a knot with the 2 ends, making a loop from the ribbon so that it can hang from the Chivari chairs at the ceremony.  It looked like this:

After I had that, it was time to make the flowers.  I had done a test run without the beads, and I didn’t like the way I could see the green wire, so I decided to make “centers” for the tulle flowers.  This turned out to be one of the more time consuming parts, so I am planning to use a large pearl-looking bead rather than a ton of seed-beads when I make all of these to save time.

To make the flowers, I laid out the tulle in the floor, and then folded in half “hotdog style” and then I put some straight pins around the edges just to keep it in place.  Then it was time to start cutting.  I cut it in 5-inch strips, like this:

I would cut anywhere from 5 to 10 at a time, depending on which task was looking more appealing, cutting or flower-making J.  Once you have the strips, it’s time to start making flowers.  I first did the “center” by putting some of the silver beads onto the center of a piece of wire (I’m not really sure how long of a piece of wire I used, but I tended to go long and then you can trim them at the end) and then twisting it into a circle and then I attempted to cover the twist by putting more beads on:

Next I accordion-folded the strips and twisted the wire around the center:

Then I “fluffed” it into a flower by pulling the layers of tulle apart from each other.  Make sure that the wire is twisted for a few inches and then using your scissors or wire cutters cut it off near the end of the twist.

After I had enough flowers made (again, not sure on the count and it depends on how you want it to look, also you can always make more flowers if you run out), get the glue gun ready to go.  I started by making a hole with the flower by sticking it into the ball and removing it, then I put some hot glue into the hole as well as right around the hole on the surface of the ball, then put the flower back in.   Then I just did this for each flower, until the ball is full of flowers, and I was done!

Here’s a picture of my finished product:

And one with my little helper Maggie:

Elizabeth