Bring the beauty of flowers that never fade into your home with this surprisingly simple craft. Our trio of vintage-style keepsake bouquets includes pink violets, blue hydrangeas, and purple-and-gold pansies.
Tools and Materials
- Lightweight fabrics, such as voile or Indian cotton,
- Tray
- Medium paintbrush
- Liquid fabric stiffener, at crafts stores
- Petal and leaf craft punches
- Micro hole punch
- Floral pips (small wires with colored tips used to make silk flowers), at crafts stores
- Contact cement
- Floral wire
- Wire cutters
- Green floral tape
- Floral tape
- Vase (optional)
Fabric-Punched Bouquet How-To
1. Begin by punching fabric flowers: Lay a piece of fabric in a shallow tray. With a medium paintbrush, apply enough fabric stiffener to saturate, but not soak, the fabric. Let it dry, about 1 hour. Repeat with any remaining fabric.
2. Using craft punches, punch out petals and leaves as close together on the fabric as possible.
3. Using a micro hole punch, make a hole in the center of each bloom. Slip a pip through each hole, and secure it with a dab of contact cement.
4. To make a stem, cut a length of floral wire, and wrap it around each pip with green floral tape.
5. For leaves, glue floral wire to each one to create veins and stems. Wrap stems with floral tape.
6. Gather blooms and leaves into a bouquet, and either tuck them in a vase or wrap the stems in more floral tape to join them.
Resources
Special thanks to Marcie McGoldrick, holiday editor for Martha Stewart Living, for demonstrating this project from "Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts." Martha and Marcie used craft punches from Martha Stewart Crafts, available in our Martha Stewart Shop.
For more great projects, check out these floral-inspired crafts.
I love this craft idea! I cannot wait to try it! Thanks for posting!
myan, we've now added this notation in the Tools and Materials list.
Why don't they explain what some of these items are....I hadn't a clue what "floral pips" were...I had to do a search...where I come from...or in my years of crafting...they are called "stamens"...why didn't they just say that or at least put it in ( )
Yes, you can purchase fabric flowers at a store, but I think the idea is to spend time crafting - it's the process that people like, knowing they made something lovely themselves and spent their time creating.
I love all of Martha's ideas. Most of them are for the crafter who has the time to create such beautiful things. I've tried a few projects and they have worked out well. One thing Martha's group does is document the project very well.
This is way too much work for a few flowers even though they are lovely. Michaels sell gorgeous hydrangeas at a reasonable price when they are on sale.
You can find the "pips" at www.blumchen.com. They call them stamen on their fabulous website!