Felt & Button Flower Bouquets - FTW!

O.M.G. Okay, so when I started to run across felt flower bouquets and button bouquets on Offbeat Bride, I went goo-goo-ga-ga over them. But feeling a bit intimidated, I felt the need to order a "kit" with all of the supplies together and step-by-step instructions. The kit I ordered was through Princess Lasertron and indeed, it was awesome. And yes, initially, I was quite intimidated by all the bits and pieces in the box. But now? I am obsessed! I want to make an endless supply of these flowers. They are so much fun and many of them have turned out so pretty!
So, these are some of the flowers I've made for my bouquet so far. And I am thrilled! So how have I gone from being totally in love but intimidated to obsessively wanting to make flower after flower? I've had to take things little by little. As Nick has said to me before, "Melaina, you can't eat the whole elephant in one bite." And in this case, that was very sage advice. So first off, I told Princess Lasertron the colors for our wedding: red, orange, turquoise, purple and pink. So she sent me a kit made of felt flower shapes, buttons and embroidery floss in these colors. While I waited for the kit to arrive, I'll admit, I did a little more shopping. I found more felt flower shapes on EBay and bought some extra supplies. I ended up throwing in a few yellows just to mix things up a bit, too.

Even after the kit arrived, however, I was still intimidated. I let the kit sit by my desk for several weeks (though admittedly, I was also on a deadline for finishing my latest comic, so I did have to keep my priorities straight for that time). But once the comic was done, my dear friend Mari and I decided to have a drawing date. Seeing as I was finished my latest comic and still conceptualizing my next one, I decided to use my time to start making my flowers.

In the approximately 5 hours we spent together, I don't think I finished a single one. BUT... I had so much fun! What I ended up doing was starting to put together the pieces for each flower. So I chose what colors of flowers to put with which color leaf and found a button that looked nice with each flower. I also dug through my own personal collection of random buttons that I've had for years and years and pulled out several of my own buttons to incorporate into the flowers. I'm giddy just thinking about how much fun that process was.

I will admit I got a little OCD about it. I actually made a chart that showed every possible two-tone and three-tone color combination amongst those 5 (well 6, including the yellow) colors. I think I came up with 34 options. As I'm only making 17 flowers, I could only choose about half of those options, but I wanted to try to avoid repeating color combinations. I feel very strongly about diversity! ;-) Next I put each individual flower combination into a snack-sized plastic baggie. And THEN I started to make the individual flowers.

I hadn't considered the colors of the embroidering thread when I was initially putting the flowers together, so that was another decision I had to make. But I tried not to feel too overwhelmed by that one and just went with my gut as to what looked best.

I only have 6 more flowers to make for my bouquet. But as I've been having so much fun with this, I've already gone onto EBay to buy some more random supplies so I can put together my own kits to make the bridesmaids' bouquets and groomsmen's boutonnieres. Seeing as I've decided to go all the way with this, you *must* believe me when I tell you how much fun I'm having!

Cake Topper

A lot has happened that I've skipped posting about. I've been wanting to keep some pieces of information to myself, as I'm afraid if I spill all the beans on here, there will be no fun surprises at the wedding for those who attend. But today's progress with wedding planning was too fun to keep to myself.

Nick (my handsome fiance) spends a lot of time at this place called Noisebridge in San Francisco. It's known to be a bit of a "hacker hangout." He finally took me there about a week ago to show me this place that he's so crazy about.

On what I thought was an unrelated note... I have been searching the internet trying to find a cake topper that inspired me. I found some cute wood cut-out style toppers on Etsy that someone would make for us and base the images on a photo we provided them with. I thought that was cool, but how odd to have a cartoon character version of ourselves drawn by someone else. I then emailed and asked the gal if she would make a cut-out based on an image that I drew and she said she would, but that she'd charge me more. Then all of a sudden, I remembered hanging out with my friend Lisa when she showed me a wood cut-out project that she was working on. AND I remembered seeing a woodshop at Noisebridge when Nick had given me a tour there.

So today, Lisa and I made plans to hang out at the Noisebridge woodshop together today. I somewhat spontaneously came up with an illustration after we arrived and painstakingly sketched it out directly onto a piece of woodscrap that was there. I would recommend sketching it on paper first for future reference, as brushing eraser crumbs off of wood left me with a couple of splinters. But in the end, with *much* needed coaching from Lisa, I was able to cut out a final draft of the illustration.

I'm planning to paint it and probably sand it down a little better. But I'm pretty psyched by my first draft, especially considering this was my first time using a band saw. And I left Noisebridge with all of my fingers intact! Yay!