A Surprise for The Ladies: Part Two

You may recall from this post that I had a little surprise in store for the single ladies attending our wedding reception.

Tossing Fortune Bouquet

Materials

• Fabric
• Wooden beads
• Garden dowels (available in the floral section of Michael's)
• Glue gun
• Ribbon
• Paint
• Mechanical pencil
• Clear nail polish

Instructions

First, I cut the fabric into little circles.  You'll need about eight circles per flower.  You may find it helpful to cut a circle out of thick paper (like construction paper or cardstock), then use it as a stencil.

Then, I used a glue gun to attach the wooden beads to the dowels.  You can thread the dowel through the hole in the bead if it's big enough, or just attach it to the tip.

Next, I folded the circles in half, then in half again.  Then, I attached each "petal" to the wooden bead.  As I mentioned before, you want at least eight petals per flower.

About one Disney movie and an Irish coffee later, I ended up with this:

You'll need to paint your fortunes onto the ribbons.  I found that the best way to do this is by using a mechanical pencil as a paintbrush, and by slowly painting in a print font (I would not recommend attempting cursive).  Leave plenty of room after your quote, as this part of the ribbon will tie around the bouquet.  Also, make sure you paint the edge of the cut ribbon with clear nail polish to prevent fraying.

I ended up with six quotes for six bouquets, and I had twelve flowers (6 white and 6 yellow).  To make each mini bouquet, I taped together two flowers.

Then, I attached the quote ribbon by tying it on.

I then wrapped the blank side of the quote ribbon around the rest of the stem.  I secured the end to the stem with a little bit of glue from the glue gun.

The quote part should still be dangling down.  You're just using the blank end to wrap around the stem.  The final mini bouquets should look like this:

Finally, I used another color ribbon to tie the mini bouquets into one big bouquet.  All I'll have to do is take this ribbon off before the big toss, and the bouquet will burst into six mini bouquets!

I can't wait to see the look on my girls' faces when this thing gets put into action!  What about you?  Are you doing anything different for your bouquet toss?