Guitar Pick Flowers

Materials & Costs
Guitar Picks - I ordered 28 packs of 12 white celluloid standard picks for about $80 from http://www.juststrings.com/
2 bottles of nail polish - 5.99 each because the colour I wanted was limited edition, dries in 50 seconds stuff, I suggest regular polish, the quick dry stuff dried a little too quick for my taste
Floral wire - pack of 30 for 2.99 I think from Michaels
Floral tape - ~1.99 per roll, also at Michaels
Hot Glue Gun & Glue
Hand Drill with tiny drill bit
Needle-nose pliers
Wide painters tape
Patience...lots of patience
Total Cost: ~$100 for 1 bride, 1 MOH and 3 BM bouquets and 6 boutonnieres

I'm just going to go over the basic steps to bending picks and making a flat one coloured flower.  You can see from the rest of the pics the different variations I did but they all go together basically the same.  My inspiration came from a shop on Etsy but I didn't have the budget to pay $399 for my bouquets so I decided to DIY them.  I couldn't for the life of me find the cool colours that she uses for her picks or the smaller white picks so I did what I could with what was available to me.

Bending Picks
This was the hardest thing to figure out when Ryan and I started this project.  We thought we could easily soften the picks a bit over a lighter and bend them...turns out this is a BAD idea, they are EXTREMELY flammable and go up all at once, no slow burn here.  This is what did work:

1. boil a kettle of water until its just simmering and pour some into a measuring cup or other heat resistant bowl
2. For the first few, i suggest drawing a line on the pick with pencil so you know where to bend it, after you get the hang of it you can wing it
3. Holding the pick right side up, line up the edge of your pliers with your pencil line and use them to grip the pick
4. Dip the pick into the water for about 20 seconds to soften it enough to bend

5. Use your finger to bend the pick slightly upward against the pliers (sorry some of the pictures are sideways)

6. Hold it for a few seconds until it cools enough to hold its shape and leave to dry on a towel

Assembling Flowers

1. Paint any 'petals' that you want coloured using the nail polish.  I found that this worked far better than spray paint or ceramic/wood paint to hold on the picks.  The others tended to be 'scratch-off-able'

2. Arrange 5 petals in a flower shape on a flat surface, place a piece of painters tape over top to hold the shape then flip it upside down

3. Put a dab of hot glue at the base of each petal and place another pick over the glue to form the center of the flower

4. Drill 2 tiny holes through the center of the flower just big enough for your floral wire to fit through

5. Fold one length of wire in half and insert one end through each hole in the center of the flower, twist the wire together to form the stem and secure the wire with a dot of glue on the back of the flower to keep it straight.

6.  Glue a bead (or 2 or 3...) onto the face of the flower, if your floral wire was flexible and thin enough, you could also thread the beads onto it before putting the other end through the hole.

For double layered flowers - glue another pick to the back of each petal slightly raised

For single layer flowers with bent up petals - eyeball the placement of the petals on the central pick instead of taping

For double layer flowers with bent up petals - place a bent up petal on top of each flat petal; make sure you paint the back sides of the bent up petals

 7. Wrap the stems in floral tape just as you would with silk flowers or you can leave them plain. That's what I chose to do just because I kind of liked the look and they were easier to shove into the floral foam like that


Assembling Bouquets:
1. Choose your bouquet holder.  I used a combination of toilet paper tubes and the inside tube from a roll of aluminum foil for the MOH and BM bouquets and a paper towel tube for my bouquet.
2. Cut it to length (the TP tube was the perfect length for the bouquets, you can get 2 similar lengths from the foil tube)
3. For the TP and paper towel tubes I wanted them narrower so I cut a strip off the side and hot glued the edges together.
4. Stand your brick of floral foam upright and place one of the tubes on top near the edge, like a cookie cutter on a brick of cookie dough, then bang on the top to force it down through the brick about 3/4 of the way up the tube, then cut it out of the brick using an exacto knife.  The bottom is the end filled with foam).
5. Wrap the foam filled tube however you want.  I used 4 small pieces of ribbon arranged and glued like wheel spokes across the bottom of the tube and then wrapped from the bottom up.
6. Arrange your flowers in the floral foam.  I found that for all the bouquets except mine I had to cut about 1.5" from the bottom of the wire stems.  I got arrangement inspiration from my inspiration seller on Etsy.
7. Enjoy your flowers and all the compliments you get on them!

BM Bouquet

MOH Bouquet Side

MOH Bouquet Top

Bride Bouquet Top

Bride Bouquet Side

Boutonnieres:
Not really instructions, but we're just using a single 2 layer flower with a badge pin (like the ones on campaign buttons) on the back for the boutonnieres.  I couldn't think of anything else to add to them but they look pretty sharp :)