Shake your bouty

         Oh the boutonniere, so hard to spell and yet so easy to make. Add this one to my check list of completed do it yourself projects my friends, they are done and done.  How did it go you ask? Well, let me enlighten you. I started out this project with the intention of making fabric flowers and then realized what I was holding in my hot little hand would make an excellent bout.  That's how I start most of my projects, I stumble upon them. 

     This whole thing started when I found some tank tops in the back of my closet that I wanted to cut the lace off of to make lace flowers. I then tried to put the rest of the fabric to good use. I had read about burnt petal flowers and thought it sounded like an easy project. You have to use a fabric that will crinkle up when put over a flame. Now to just check the tags to see what they're made out of... Polyester! Yahtzee! 

                                      

    Above are the tanks and the lace I removed. I then googled "burnt petal fabric flowers" to refresh my memory on how to do it and found this website. It also has some great tutorials on other types of fabric flowers. So i began to cut out circles of fabric and got out a candle and went to work. The pink fabric is a before and after shot and the black fabric is to show the various sizes I began to make. After not being able to fit them all together I started to make just three sizes that I could nest together. it's really a trial and error depending on what look you're going for. 

      After making a few not so great flowers I started to get the hang of it and realized I could make some bouts out of them. Off to the store I went (with coupons, of course) to get some more supplies. I bought a 1/2 yard of cream colored fabric along with some pearls and black gems. Here's what I was able to make. 

                                     I burnt a lot of circles and just mix and matched to form flowers.

       Flowers with black middles had all layers sewn together with pearls added. Flowers with cream middles would get a few stitches through the center and then I hot glued the black gem in the middle.

                                                              * All personal photos

         In part two I will be adding the finishing touches, get excited. Would you have your groom wear a non floral bout? Think it's a bad idea to have black bouts on black jackets?