Show & Tell Friday: Beautiful Bouquets

I think that today's silk flowers are of such quality that you can make really beautiful arrangements and bouquets that look so real, they can really fool the observer (until they take a closer look, of course!)  I love real flowers very much, but they only last so long in a cut arrangement and if you are like me, and have only a small yard with newer plantings, you may not have cutting gardens large enough to cut flowers without decimating your entire flower bed and leaving it bare of blooms! Especially in a northern state like Wisconsin, where we only have a growing season of a few months, it can take years and years for cutting gardens to get prolific enough.

Because I love the look of elegant bouquets and flower arrangements in my house, but don't always have enough fresh flowers available, I rely on my crafty-ness to make up for, artificially, what nature cannot sometimes provide for me!

Here are some simple silk arrangements that I have made for my home:
This one was super simple because I placed the flower stems in a tall glass vase that is filled with white iridescent glass "stones" and just moved things around to the way I wanted it to look. So easy!  I have pink and white silk peonies and green viburnum in this arrangement. I move this bouquet around the house. Sometimes it sits on top of the harmonium in the parlor and sometimes it gets moved to my dining room table as a nice spring time centerpiece. The peonies themselves were a little more pricey than some silks, because they are very high-quality and they actually feel like real petals when you touch them (I think they added some latex to them), but I don't mind that they were a little more; the whole thing was still much cheaper than ones I see pre-made in stores.

This wreath I made for the back door with silk flowers I found on clearance. I bought the grapevine wreath and then used floral wire and some hot glue to attach the flowers and filler. It cost me about $8 to make this.

This one I made for the table in our front entry hall. I bought the container and silk flowers at a local crafting store and used a foam block in the container to place the flowers. I always use a little hot glue on each stem before placing it in the foam.

I also used my mad crafting skills to make the bouquets for my wedding in 2007. I love the look of fresh flowers for wedding bouquets, but I don't love the cost. To help rein in the cost of our wedding and to satisfy my frugal nature, I made five bridesmaids bouquets and one bride's bouquets for less than a $120, which was a great price. And they looked very beautiful! Many of the guests at the wedding thought the flowers were real.

Bridesmaid's bouquet

Bridal Bouquet (with an antique brooch that I bought).

Each bouquet also had a jeweled pin with the initial of the girls' name on it. This was mine. :-)

Bridesmaid bouquet, side view

Bride bouquet

I also made wedding bouquets for others also:

The one on the left was for one of my sisters; she had an autumn wedding. The one on the right was for my other sister, she had a spring wedding, so I used white tulips and purple roses.

A friend of mine wanted very simple, small bouquets of red roses for her bridesmaids and a white rose bouquet for herself for her January wedding.

They all were not difficult to make and I had so much fun doing them! Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my Show and Tell. Be sure to visit Cindy's My Romantic Home for more Show and Tell Friday!