How to make a light-up Christmas ornament wedding bouquet

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#Floral DIY#christmas#diy bouquet#diy wedding#non-floral bouquet#tutorial

A few weeks ago, I featured Naomi's crafty/punk wedding, and there were lots of folks who wanted to know more about Naomi's illuminated christmas bulb bouquet, which her mother made for her. Well, I got the information from Naomi! Here y'all go…

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Supplies Needed:
[Editor's note: all these supplies should be available at craft stores, but I've linked to online providers as well]

Prepare the Christmas ornaments:

  1. Cut about 4 inch pieces of florist wire
  2. Bend the wires in half and stick them into the bulb tops
  3. Glue wire into bulbs
  4. Use as many as you need to fill your bouquet, about half shiny and half glittery bulbs

Prepare the tulle & lights:

  1. Cut ten 4-inch tulle squares
  2. Tie the tulle in the middle with the florist wire
  3. Twist the wire to make a stick
  4. Stick the tulle sticks in the base
  5. Attach the LED lights to 10 of these with craft wire
  6. Cut bead sticks to about 4 inch lengths

Build the bouquet:

  1. Starting in the center of the styrofoam bouquet base, first insert the Christmas bulbs on wires, filling the entire bouquet
  2. Then, add the tulle and lights between the ornaments
  3. To ensure things are filled in, add plain tulle picks without lights as necessary
  4. Add the bead picks as embellishment

Hiding the battery pack:
I made a bag out of the 4 inch ribbon and inserted the battery pack. I attached the battery pack to the handle of the bouquet by wrapping tulle around it and tying it off. I also covered the bottom side of the bouquet form with ribbon.

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About the Author: Ariel

@arielmstallings

Author of three editions of the Offbeat Bride book and its sequel (From Shitshow To Afterglow, the ultimate offbeat breakup book) Ariel Meadow Stallings is the publisher of all the Offbeat Empire web properties. She lives in Seattle with her son. To read her latest writing, follow @arielist on Medium.

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Comments on How to make a light-up Christmas ornament wedding bouquet

  1. Oh! Oh! Thank you!!!! Since seeing Naomi’s bouquet I became totally fixated on making one just like it and now I don’t have to figure it out myself by breaking things 🙂 Thank you again! And I have to say, her mum is awesomely talented 🙂

  2. How fun! And that would be so great in white and silver for a Christmas or winter wedding. Winter solstice – light returning to the world – oh, I love it!

  3. EEEP! That is awesome! I recently went to Michaels and bought a BUNCH of clearance Xmas decor stuff and this would be super! Thank you Naomi! This might just be the perfect thing for my Vegas Wedding Posse…

  5. Those aren’t just bouquets, those can be centerpieces, too! Thanks for sharing!

  6. Thanks for posting this! I found myself looking at the pics from this wedding again last night. Such a gorgeous, young, obviously fun couple. Congrats &thank you, Naomi.

  8. Tulle – “Tie them in the middle and make sticks out of them” ?? Can’t visualize that step. How do you make sticks out of tulle?

    • I’ve made many wedding bouquets, and if you get the wood picks with the wire on the end, you would take the wire and tie it around the center of your 4″ tull square. Kind of makes it look like a bow tie. Then when you have enough of them filled in around your bouquet, they will look like the photo.

  9. Cate, that confused me too … but I assumed it was just my lack of DIY-ness. I’ve asked Naomi for some clarification.

  10. I love this bouquet. Thanks for posting directions. I’m going to do a black and white tulle bouquet.

  11. Hi Cate, my guess is (and it’s only a guess) is she means that you tie the tulle in the middle with the florist wire, then twist the wire to make a stick, then stick it in the base. That’s what makes sense to me, at least.

  12. this is amazing it is beautiful it is makin me re think my bouquet at my wedding. it is gorgous

  14. Nikki
    January 27th, 2009 · 11:24 AM · #
    Hi Cate, my guess is (and it’s only a guess) is she means that you tie the tulle in the middle with the florist wire, then twist the wire to make a stick, then stick it in the base. That’s what makes sense to me, at least.

    Exactly what Nikki said. THANKS!! i was having a hard time trying to type that up:o)

  15. YAY! Glad I could help! I want to make one of these, just for the heck of it!

  16. Wow, this is really helpful. Ever since I saw the first picture of this I thought it was so cute. I might just try it out! Thanks so much for sharing the secret!!!

  17. Okay, too cute. But, I’m stuck at the beginning with –

    1 – Bend the wires in half and stick them into the bulb tops
    2 – Glue wire into bulbs

    Where do we glue? my wire continuously falls out of the bulb or the bulbs are all floppy. Help?

  18. I just made a red and black one! argh! its so awesome! thanks for posting it, however i cant find christmas lights in brisbane atm (if anyone knows anywhere pls let me know!!) or more christmas decos. wah! i’ll have to go raid my friends decorations! teehee!
    also i can get them to stop falling out either,(out of the foam thing) but i’m going to try hot glue gunning it!
    Thanks again!

  20. I’m putting these bqts together for my friend’s wedding in green and purple and also including some knitted flowers! I’ve seen this bouquet somewhere once but it’s great to now have the directions for making it! Thanks! I’ll take pics of our finished bqts and share if anyone is interested!! 🙂

  22. I’m planning my Christmas wedding and was trying to come up with an alternative to flowers, because there just aren’t many good blue flowers (at least not in royal blue). I love the shininess of ornaments and started the hunt for an ornament bouquet .. and this is exactly what I want! Amazing! And I can make it months in advance and it won’t wilt or die.

  23. Hey Mindy,If you want wedding/christmas lights – try Christmas Alight at Everton Hills. They have the battery operated white LED lights.
    Cheers.

  24. wow great idea for a bouquet that can be used as decoration item after the wedding!! If anyone had made one in different colors, is it possible to post a picture just out of amazement on people crafty talents? thanks great tips!

  25. Thank you so very much!!!!!!!! My husband to be did not want any flowers this is our answer. Again thank you so much.

  26. I aboslutely love this and my mom and I are helping my soon to be sister in law make one for her wedding. The only thing we aren’t sure of is the size of styrofoam ball to start with??

  27. love to you from a fellow Naomi!!! I adore this idea! Am gonna give it a trial!

  28. I stumbled upon this through google searches for my upcoming December wedding. I just wanted to say it is gorgeous and I am making one for myself. I also thought I would add that here in Jersey the Dollar Tree carries the battery pack lights and now has pretty much all components for this project available. Not the floral parts but rest of it tulle and all. Sorry its just that I'm so excited that I can save alot of money making this and it still looking amazing. Thankyou!

  29. Uh, you didn't tell how to make the CROCHET flower that MADE the bouquet! Pleeeeese! I ONLY wanted that infor! Thanks!

  30. I love this idea, i am having a Winter Wonderland theme wedding in December and this will fit right in with my theme.

  31. This is great! Idea’s are crowding my mind with how I could tranform this into halloween themed, lol. Thank you 🙂

  32. Dalaina.. you could choose colors such as orange or purple or even red with black tulle and with black silk roses somehow I think it would turn out pretty cool?? hope this helps I too am planning a halloween themed renewal and think this would be pretty cool too. If I can decide what color to use lol.

  33. I googlw searched for non-floral wedding bouquets and looked at so many and then this site popped up and i a totally addicted!!! that was in novemeber and i’m still finding little things to add to our august wedding. some of the ideas have just blown my mind! i never thought i had any creativity but after seeing some of these things my mind went off! we are making this bouquet for our wedding. our colors are all neon colors. blue, ornage, green, and pink. all my girls have a bouquet in their color like this and then mine is all the colors along with some silver one and we’re crafting a pomander off all the colors for my flower girl out of the Christmas balls. lol i love it when ppl ask me what my flowers are and i tell them none!!! so glad i found this. i felt like my strange ideas would be meh and blah and “who actually has a wedding withou ________ (flowers) or whatever else.

  34. No one seems to have commented for about a year, but I just came across this and want to make one of these for my december wedding (white ornament, black tulle, with red beads and ribbon) but don’t know what size ornaments to use. The instructions say “medium sized” but what does that mean? 1.5 in? 2.5 in? I’m horrible at envisioning things.

  35. soup.. Im guessing it depends on how big you want your bouquet… I would say the about the small ones ( golf size) would make a pretty good meduim size bouquet with tulle or silk flowers combo and if you plan on adding lights too. Hope this helps you decide on the size bouquet you want.

  37. Hello, all!

    I just made some bouquets using this tutorial last weekend. I found I did need to change a few things.

    1. Use floral wood picks instead of just wire (we got 3″ ones). They’re basically just big toothpicks with wire on the end, and they’ll stay in the foam much better. We found some at Michael’s.

    2. Buy lots of tulle. We ran out and couldn’t finish what we started until we got more supplies!

    3. We didn’t use lights at all. We couldn’t find ones that were small, and the ones we did find would have been more of a headache than they were worth.

    4. We used between 13-16 smallish balls per bouquet, and no big ones. I have no idea how the OP fit 30 in.

    5. I couldn’t find any bead picks at all, let alone matching ones, but they look great without them.

    6. Make sure you use plastic balls. Anything else will be too heavy and you’ll have to glue them into the base, which just makes everything more complicated. The plastic ones on wood picks will stay in fine (I hope).

    Anyway, I hope this helps someone! I know I was kind of lost with this tutorial, so hopefully someone else can learn from my experience.

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