Sola Flowers

Well its been a while, life well and truly got in the way - 2 children under 3, increase in working hours, Christmas, birthdays and wedding planning have taken up all of my time. Its one of these things I am going to focus on today though, it is of course THE WEDDING! I'm sure most people who have planned a wedding will agree that it completely takes over your brain to the extent of when doing a nappy change you start wondering which cloth nappy to buy to match the flower girl dress you have for your daughter (is that crazy?)

Anyway, we are attempting to do this wedding on a budget (saving for a house deposit at the same time) and the cost of flowers was pretty shocking. I attempted coffee filter roses (look back on the blog, pretty hideous) then thought of getting silk until I stumbled upon Sola flowers! Made from balsa wood, they are handmade from soft wood and most importantly REALLY CHEAP! You can buy them ready made (look on Etsy, they are beautiful) but that is obviously more expensive than making them up yourself.

Sola flowers are pretty unheard of in the UK but I was lucky enough to find a bag of them leftover from someones wedding on Ebay which I bought just to check I did like them in person before I had them shipped over from America. The beauty of sola flowers is that you can easily dye them any colour you want. These were dyed (rather impatiently) with food colouring

You may be able to see the slight blue marks on them - if you dye more than one colour, make sure they are dry before you put them next to each other!!!

A very rough idea of a bouquet, but by mocking it up I decided not to buy the bela drum flowers (larger with a slightly woody centre). I also hopefully wont use a toilet roll to pad out the handle on my actual bouquet! I still need to sort out what filler plants I want to use and buy the extras such as pearl pins for the centres of a few of the flowers, decide on a more attractive handle wrap etc etc...loads to do, but its a work in progress,

I have however ordered the flowers! I'll update with a picture of them when I can (eg, when my toddler is in bed and I can get them out without him trying to eat them!)