Reproduction Orange Blossoms

Ah weddings.  I love them so and I love Victorian Weddings the most.  The dresses, the flowers, the customs and the cake!  I am wanting to have a "Dressing the Victorian Bride" underwear show as an available program for my new business The House of Whyte.  To that end, I have been researching like crazy, planning and collecting artifacts for my Bridal/Wedding Collection to display, as well as fabrics and accessories to make the underwear and wedding dress to dress myself with for the program.  I have some very lovely antique orange blossom headpieces in my collection for display, but don't want to actually wear them as they are fragile and I don't want to cause them any more wear and tear than is necessary.  

I was considering purchasing some reproduction orange blossom kits from Laci's (about half way down the page), but the cost was causing me to pause.  I don't even remember the words I wrote on Google search, but somehow I happened upon This Video on YouTube by Castle in the Air on how to make your own waxed orange blossoms.  I was dumbfounded, excited, floored, hysterical with joy and needed to make them NOW.  It was late afternoon on Saturday (approximately 2 minutes after I had watched the video for the 4th time) when Colton and I headed to Michael's, Hobby Lobby and Zurcher's Party Store to pick up the supplies I needed to make these lovelies.  

Upon returning home, I set about making my own waxed orange blossoms and pips.  I had some vintage silk lily of the valley and some leaves that I also dipped in the bees wax (years ago I made quite a few bees wax candles so melted a couple of them down for my wax).  I want to incorporate the lily of the valley into the bouquet and headpiece, because they are so lovely and a lot of brides also used them.

I had such a fun time making these sweet and beautiful items!  I simply followed the tutorial and didn't have any issues.  I did do a couple of different things as the crepe paper I have at my disposal is not at all like the tutorial uses, but I am an impatient sort of person and didn't want to order the paper online.

Next step?  Make bouquet, headpiece, corsage and boutonniere!  

Waxed Lily of the Valley and orange blossoms.

I didn't have the weight of paper that Castle in the Air sells, so I painted with white paint three layers of party crepe paper and sandwiched them together before cutting the petals out.  I also chose to paint the ends of the fringe stamens with yellow paint.  I googled orange blossoms and the ends have yellow on them.  I'm assuming it's pollen...

I couldn't find any green crepe paper the looked good, so I used a pale green florists tape to tape my stems.

Pretty flowers awaiting their bouquets!

Large blossom buds.  Many Victorian brides had lots of these in their head pieces.

Small buds...I used stamen pips from Hobby Lobby for these and some buds from a wreath that I had hanging around.

I chose not to make any leaves because the color of crepe paper was too light...like a lime color.  I had these small leaves in my millinery flower stash so chose to wax them.

A loose bunch of flower and buds.  I so cannot wait to start putting them together!

I hope that you all have a wonderful rest of your Monday!  The sun is shining here and the weather is so lovely.  I think I need to go out and enjoy it for a while!

Blessings!

g