Merci Bouquet

A little play on words to express my gratitude for generous bloggers who share their techniques and files, and also to the angels who helped to make sure that I had (nearly) enough flowers made for both shops!

Let's start where I started in the bouquet making process... Figuring out how many vases and pots and décor things I'd need to fill out each shop. I got out my pot and vase organizers and spread out various place holders in each shop just to get a rough idea of how many vases/pots I was potentially looking at having to make up. I was pretty much convinced after this exercise that I would be terribly short of flower stems! And that I would nearly wipe out my supply of vases and pots!

I determined that in order to have enough containers, I was going to have to make some. That's where some luck and gratitude came in! After a Google search for galvanized flower pots, I came across the We Love Miniatures tutorial on how to make galvanized flower buckets. Annie even provided a pattern for the buckets on her web site! We Love Miniatures Pattern Downloads Thanks so much, Annie!

I was able to bring the pattern into my graphics program, then isolate and clean up the pattern for import into Cricut Design Space. For those of you with a Cricut, here's a link to the file. It has 28 buckets and bottoms and fits on one piece of Cricut Kraft Board. 

My first cut didn't include the bottoms - that was an improvement I added after I realized it would be much easier to have my Maker cut the bottoms for me.

Following (almost) the tutorial in the video, I made up many buckets. 

Annie provides another great video on how to give things a zinc effect. I used it as a guideline for painting mine, though I included glazing medium in my silver and white layers and then finished them off with a satin varnish. I love how they turned out! Thanks again, Annie!

And here they are with the loose flower stems arranged inside. I arranged them as best as I could in the empty buckets, then grabbed the bunch and held them together, hoping not to disturb the arrangement too badly, while I filled the bucket with hot glue. Then I carefully popped the bunch in the bucket and wrangled any rebels back into submission. Once the hot glue had set, I was able to turn, bend, spread and arrange them until I liked the presentation.

I bet you're wondering if I really did have enough flower stems to fill both shops. The great news is - I did! And here is what I have left. 

I still need to add flowers to the hanging basket for the peach shop, but I have leftover leaves, a few fuchsia stems and a whole new Bonnie Lavish fuchsia kit to use. I can do that close to the end, though. I also had to make up five different sets of herb leaves, but they went pretty fast. 

Here are the vases I made up for the peach shop. In the clear glass and plastic vases, to hold the stems in and give them the look of resting in water, I used UV Resin And a UV Flashlight. For the non clear vases I used hot glue.

And the herb and flower pots. The herbs are SDK kits, and the topiaries are made up of huckleberry branches from my stash and MBS Squeeze Me Bushes. I think they are the 1-1/2" size. The little herb pot labels are 3D printed leftovers from when I made Tasha's Kitchen in 2020. Playing around with the alcohol inks to get the right shade of green for the herbs is challenging but fun!

I'll save the big reveal photos with everything loaded into the shops for next time. I want to hold back the blue shop's vases, pots and décor, too, in case the recipient stalks me, lol! She can't help but spy on me from time to time! I want her to enjoy a surprise!

Merci beaucoup for stopping by! See you next time!

xo xo,

Jodi