Finished lillies

All the parts for one lily; six petals, one set of stamens, thin wire.

I used the thinner wire to secure and brace all of the petals together in sets, an inner and outer with three petals in each set.

After all six of the petals are secure to teh center, I add a thick floral wire and wrap with floral tape.

The next step is to gently bend each petal back.

In the box above you can see the flowers that will make up the bouquet for my friend; tiger lillies, asters and dogwoods.

daisy headbands

dogwoods

I finally received the beads I was waiting for to create the dogwood blooms for the bouquet. It was surprisingly difficult for me to find just the right color only being able to view the beads online. It seems that bead colors just don't show true over the computer. Anyway, the colors arrived and I began the dogwood making process.

I followed the general pattern for a beaded dogwood bloom from The Art of French Beaded Flowers: Creative Techniques for Making 30 Beautiful Blooms by Carol Benner Doelp . Of course I added my own twists in some places.

Here you can see that I have made all of the petals to be used in the bouquet flowers, but have yet to make the centers.

I left extra wire hanging from the centers and used it as the assmbly wire for connecting all of the petals to create the blooms.

I also made the corsage for Michael's mother out of dogwoods. I used a slightly different colored cream bead instead of the white for the bouquet and a darker green for the center as well as the sepals.

Check previous post to see mother of the bride corsage.

Pink Lillies

These little pink lillies make up the corsage for the mother of the bride. The color doesn't show up exactly right. Even though they look orangey in the pitures they are actually a shiny light pink with purple accent. The stamen are made with amethyst colored swarovski crystal.