How to use Silk Flowers After the Wedding

One of the reasons you chose silk flowers for your wedding was their durability. Whether you carried a silk bouquet, or used silk flowers to hold the pew bows, you ended up after the wedding with a bag of beautiful flowers. Now what else can you do with them?

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Small vases
• Round paper box
• Craft glue
• Hot glue
• Plastic hairband and comb
• Ribbons
• Floral tape
• Safety pins or corsage pins
• Acrylic paint, paper and brushes
• Zip-close bag

How to use Silk Flowers After the Wedding

1. Make several mini-bouquets with a few flowers each, and put them in small silver vases. Give them as gifts to people who helped you with the wedding.
2. Frame one of your wedding photos in a deep, shadow-box style frame and add a silk flower inside the frame. This is especially effective if you use one of the flowers that's clearly visible in the photo.
3. Choose several flowers to attach to a plastic headband. Use hot glue to attach them to the plastic headband. Add a few ribbon streamers. This is a gift your flower girl will love. Or hot glue a single blossom and a bit of the silk greenery to a plastic comb to make an exotic hair accessory.
4. Choose a single bloom and a few leaves; bind the stems together with florist's tape to create a corsage. Attach a safety pin or straight pin. This would make a thoughtful gift you could mail to an elderly relative who couldn't attend the ceremony.
5. Snip off the stems from several of the blooms, large and small, and use craft glue to attach them to the top and sides of a round paper box. Use the box on your dresser or nightstand to hold jewelry, or fill the box with wedding cards and souvenirs.
6. If you're artistic, create a multimedia work of art by using paint on a sheet of canvas, incorporating flower petals from your silk arrangements as part of the picture.

Tips & Warnings

• Save a few blossoms in a zip-closed bag and store with your wedding dress; a future bride might want to add them to her own bouquet (or perhaps set them in a vase on the reception table). After a few years, they become heirlooms.
• For some projects, you might want to remove the silk petals from their stems or even cut apart individual petals.
• Don't throw away good silk flowers! Donate them to brighten a hospital or nursing home.