Build A Bouquet Kit - My Tips &Tricks

You will be instantly drawn to that gorgeous bunch of flowers on the cover of the occasions catalogue when you see it, I know I was.  I thought wow I can make that? Well, I ordered the kit in my preorder & it sat staring at me for a few weeks.  We all came down with a terrible cold on Boxing day so I thought what a wonderful project to get me through a few days of everyone being sick.  I actually did make it, but I was rather surprised by the time it took to make. Each flower is a work of art in itself!   The kit is called Build A Bouquet (137952) & will be available to purchase January 6th.

Front cover flowers

I have been paper crafting for around 4 years & have a pretty good idea on how to make flowers & 3D projects, but I have to say this kit was a challenge.  It is definitely not a beginner level project.   I struggled a lot with the vague instructions, but once I had made a few of each flower I went ok.  I decided the instructions were not detailed enough so I am in the process of writing a more in-depth tutorial.  I hope to have pictures & instructions for each flower.  The good news for customers is there will be Youtube video released on January 6th for you to follow along with.

Build a Bouquet Kit - My 1st Attempt

Close Up Of Flowers

I made a few errors & found a few tips along my way so I am happy to share this process with you.
I started with the Poppy as it was the largest & looked fairly simple.

Poppy 

The poppy requires the black fringe to be rolled in the centre.  If I was doing it again I would probably only use only 2 not the 3 suggested.  I also found it easier to join all the fringes together then roll them onto the stem.  When making the poppy create all of the petals first them assembly is so much easier.

The daisy was probably the hardest flower to get looking nice.  Mine are rather scruffy looking.  I tried each flower using a hot glue gun & then Tombow glue.  For this flower I found the Tombow created a neater flower.

  It says to stamp the small flower along the bottom of the white strips but I found you needed to stamp it more in the middle.  I did just the edge & you can tell from my finished flowers that you can hardly see the stamping.

Daisy L) Glue Gun & Vintage Faceted Button,  R) Old SAB Button & Tombow Glue. 

The wild rose was my favourite flower to create.  It had more steps but the end result is one stunning flower.  If I was going to recreate any of the flowers this one would be it.  It is a bit hard to see here but the stamping & the petals look lovely. I forgot to use 2 lots of the black stems & only used one but it looks ok.   It says to use Strawberry Slush when stamping.  I suggest you do use Strawberry Slush.  I tried using Crisp Cantaloupe & it was too wishy washy & hard to see & ended up using the Strawberry Slush on the rest.

Wild Rose - I only used one set of black stems but you are supposed to use 2.

 The Pansy was quite quick to assemble as a single flower.  They needed to be taped into bunches of 3.  These leaves were a lot easier to attach using the florist tape provided.  The other leaves I found if I cut a slit in them & pinched them onto the stem that worked better.

Pansy - these were the easiest of all of the flowers, but then you have to make 3 of them per stem.

I forgot to take a photo of the Chrysanthemum on it's own & it is kind of squished in this photo.  This was my last bundle of flowers to make & it was quite fiddly with all those long petals to wind around the stem.  I used Tombow glue for an easier tighter fit, then used the bone folder to curl the petals inwards. 

Chrysanthemum

This projects was a real labour of love.  It took approximately 8hrs to make all of the flowers & I took a few shortcuts along the way.  For the long petal type flowers like the chrysanthemum & the daisy it is easier to use Tombow glue than the hot glue gun.  For the flowers that have petals I found the hot glue gun worked best.  My biggest tip is to stamp all of the petals first then assemble them into petals.  You  need to cross over the slit part & stick together.  I used Fast Fuse for this.  

The kit comes with the very beautiful vintage faceted buttons which needed to be covered with Hello Honey paper & I just could not bear to do it!  I ended up using some old sale-a-bration buttons instead.  

Dont get me wrong, these are a very beautiful project.  SO beautiful that SU have released a die in the Occasions Catalogue, so you can make more if you wish.  I will however leave that to you for now :) 

This project would be a good one to do over a series of weeks not in 2 days like I attempted.  Perhaps make all of one flower, then move on to the next a few days or weeks later. 

Another tip I have is that there is a coordinating stamp set you need to buy to stamp on your flowers. It's called Build a Bouquet (137166).   I can see lots of great projects just for the stamp set, without the flowers, however if you didn't want to buy it, you could also use Gorgeous Grunge or something similar, like Work of Art.

If you are making these flowers & are wanting some guidance, please feel free to contact me for advice or tips.  I am just an email away & I don't bite.   I am working on a detailed instruction sheet for each of the flowers, but each one is a large file with detailed photos it will need to be emailed to you.  If you would like a copy please let me know in the comments section below, or send me an email via the contact section on the side bar. 

Have fun building your bouquet! 

Thanks For Looking,

TRICIA