Project: Bouquet of Leaves

Flowers, schmowers. Who needs ‘em when you can create a stunning Fall bouquet out of leaves? I’m always on the lookout for things to make non-traditional bouquets out of. A while ago, I was heavily into crystal bouquets. This season, I’m all about foliage. Beautiful, rustic, cheap, fake foliage. Taking a cheapy silk leafed garland from Michael’s, I used a few tools, some wire, and my DIY magique to turn it into an inexpensive and easy bouquet. SUPPLIES NEEDED:

• Silk leaf garland
• Floral wire
• Wire cutters
• Floral tape
• Ribbon (1″ wide)
• Scissors
• Pearl headpin

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Begin by pulling the leaves off of the garland. I used about 40 leaves for this bouquet.
2. Cut pieces of floral wire, about 12″ – 14″ long.
3. Now, take the wire piece and wrap one end around the stem of one of the leaves, spiraling down from the leaf to the bottom of the stem. I did about 3 – 5 wraps around the stem on each leaf. (Don’t do anything to the remaining wire that’s hanging from the leaf. That’ll become part of the handle.)
4. Continue to cut wire and wrap leaf stems until all of your leaves are finished
5. The next step is to bind the leaves together in groups of 3. I found this helped make handling them easier. To do so, hold 3 wired leaves together and wrap floral tape around the stems a few times, until the binding feels tight and secure. Do this for all of your leaves.
6. Once your bundles have been created, the next step is to bind all of the groups of 3 together to make a bouquet. I gathered the whole bunch in my hand and did some arranging to get a nicely shaped bouquet. Once I was satisfied, I held the bouquet in one hand and used the floral tape to secure them together in one big bunch. [Note: I also threw in some crystal stems as an afterthought. That's why you'll see some crystals and wire sticking out.]
7. After all of the stems are bound together, I then wrapped all of the wires with floral tape from top to bottom. This helps protect your hands from pokey wires.
8. Now that the stems are covered with floral tape, I then covered that with a wrap of satin ribbon (secured with a pearl pin).

NOTES:

• This cost about $15 to make (I already had the tools) and took just over 1.5 hours to complete.
• The big box craft stores often have 50% coupons and sales – use those to your advantage!
• When wrapping the wire around the leaf stems, I recommend using a glove on our wrapping hand. My fingers were pretty sore from being poked with the wire. Not a big deal but if you’re doing lots of leaves or more than 1 bouquet, you’ll thank me.
• You can use any kind of garland with this project. Flowers, pine cones, or whatever’s in season.
• If you’d like to use real leaves, go for it! However, I highly recommend dipping then in wax first to help protect them and make them less fragile (directions from eHow). Also, use a thinner gauge wire (the higher the number, the thinner the wire) like a 22 – 26 gauge, found in the jewelry section of craft stores. Regular floral wire might be too stiff to wrap around a real leaf.