Bouquets to Art 2009 Part {3} The Work

I already told you about the Gala night, so you already saw the end result.
So let me backtrack a bit.

The process of making this dress was a combination of a lot of research and product testing and mock ups along with last minute changes and divine intervention, hehe.
I told you a few weeks ago that the Universe Blessed me right?
So we were set to receive our product via FedEx Wednesday morning and were unsure as to what to expect. San Marcos Wholesale Flowers donated silver tree to us and basically made it possible for us to make this dress and we are eternally grateful to them for their generous contribution.
When we received the box it was a single box and as Brandon walked toward me he had this scared look on his face and said I hope my email said 23 not 2-3 as two to three stems!!!
My stomach dropped and he carefully opened the box.

Whew! Looks are deceiving, that box contained 40 stems!

I made sure to lay it out and count because this product was no longer available at the flower market and so if we didn't have enough, our dress would not be made.

Once we stopped jumping up and down we got to work.

We set out our line, started stripping the leaves and stared gluing. For the next 12 hours

Then finally, finally Sunday afternoon we stopped gluing and were able to see the benefits of our work! We were finally able to start imagining the dress as a whole instead of the pieces we had practiced over the course of the last two months.


Our model Jess came over Sunday night to try the bottom on and then the we worked on the top. See how the two layers together look like it's one whole dress?
That is exactly what we wanted.
Actually I couldn't see it in my head because I am a visual person but Brandon my partner made me a believer. :)


Monday morning we started in on the top of the dress.
I sewed in the flax swirls because I just didn't trust glue to hold it in.

Then I zoned out and made and glued close to 200 cones that would be the detail in the back of the dress.

We had divided our tasks so while I did the coning, Brandon worked on the shoes. All we knew was we were going to cover them but how, we weren't too sure. So he let his creative juices flow and pretty soon he rocked out these banging shoes!

While he worked on the gluing I started to glue the clutch purse and handcraft the birdcage veil. It was the longest single thing I have ever worked on because making perfect diamonds out of vines are not at easy as you would think. Some of the branches kept snapping in half and then I would have to un-wire the section and start all over again and towards the ends I almost chucked the whole project out the window. I originally had the most beautiful anthurium to go on top but I felt it didn't work with the full dress so in the end I too, had to trust my creative juices and made a last minute design for the bird gace veil by adding in orchid and the leaves.
I used my sons basketball so that it would start to take on a shape to frame my models face.

Next up we had to start on Jessica's makeup about 1 hour before it was time to take off on Monday and our makeup artist, Rosana Vares, came over to do Jessica's makeup. Let me tell you what a pro she was. All we told her to do was make her look good, here are the colors. She then analyzed her face and told us that she would bring out her eyes with silver and tie in both green and burgundy to make her eyes look bright and evening appropriate and that she would use a dark lip to tie in the orchids that would accent our dress. We trusted her and she did not let us down. Our model looked stunning and she even had time to give me a quick make over too! I am so grateful to her for coming over and doing a fabulous job!

So here we are, almost ready to go. The bathrooms were full so we went to the mens rooms and I could not help but take a picture of the cutest bathroom flowers ever! Tomato cans with gerberas and coke bottles with craspedia(aka Billy Balls). What a great centerpeice they would make!!

One last look and we were off to the Gala!