I volunteered to make the boutonnieres for my nephew’s wedding in an aquarium in North Carolina in September.  I also made my sister’s corsage, but unfortunately, was out of frame for most of the video, so you won’t be seeing that video, darn it.

I began by taking three 7″ long lollipop sticks that you’ll find in the candy making section of your craft store. Here’s a link to some I found at Party City that were 8″ long…I’d cut them in half as you need the thickness of the longer sticks. Link: https://tinyurl.com/y4mbb966 .  I cut them in half and used three of them and hot glued them together so they were like a pyramid. I took a small piece of 7/8″ wide ribbon that I bought at Joanns in the color that matched the ties of the groomsmen, and ran it through my Xyron (link: https://tinyurl.com/yynlccyv) and laid the ribbon shiny side face up, into the Xyron, and pulled it through to create a sticker out of the ribbon. At this point, you should take two of these small pieces of ribbon and wrap the ribbon around the top and bottom of the lollipop sticks.   I mistakenly did it in the reverse order, putting the carpet tape on first…and should have done it this way instead. I took my roll of 2″ wide carpet tape link: https://tinyurl.com/y2smqnt3 (This might not be the right tape…it needs to be clear tape, and I bought mine at a small local hardware store, so don’t have a link for mine.) Take the roll of carpet tape and unroll the tape the length of your three glued-together lollipop sticks and then cut it to that length. You’ll want to wrap the carpet tape tightly around the three sticks and rub it so it adheres properly as you go…You’ll have more than enough tape to surround the three sticks, and you can trim off the excess. Make sure if your three sticks are not all the same length, that you have the uneven end hidden under your embellishments, and the even end be at the end that you’ll see. I took Offray 7/8″ wide satin ribbon that matched the men’s ties that I bought at Joann (link: https://tinyurl.com/yxpnfh2j), and leaving it on the spool, started by wrapping the ribbon around the bottom edge of the sticks to surround all three, then start to pull it on an angle and wrap the sticks all the way to the top, holding it tightly and making sure you don’t have any wrinkles or gaps in the ribbon. I think I should have gone with a thinner width than I used, maybe 1/2″ would have worked better, or even thinner...I wrapped the ribbon to the top and made sure the top was also wrapped so it had a straight row of ribbon instead of angled ribbon, then hot glued the end of the ribbon down. I bought twelve starfish from Amazon (link: https://tinyurl.com/y3nfg6dp) and strombus vittatus white sea shells from Etsy (link: https://tinyurl.com/yya65wc3). I used hot glue to glue the white sea shell to the side of the sticks about 1″ from the top of the sticks. I held the shell in place and made sure it was well adhered, then glued the starfish to the front of the sticks and onto the sea shell as well. I held it in place until the hot glue held. I took a metal brooch pin bar (link: https://tinyurl.com/y3zghxc3) and a needle and thread, and sewed it to the back of the three lollipop sticks, by sewing under the ribbon only, and making sure you can’t see the pin from the front. After attaching the pin with thread, I also added hot glue under the pin bar to make sure it would stay attached no matter what…and wrapped the thread under the pin bar and into the hot glue. 

To ready the boutonnieres for the wedding, I took a long piece of acetate and folded it in half and used a bag sealer I bought on aliexpress (link: https://tinyurl.com/yxegy7kb) and ran it along the unsealed edges of the plastic to seal the bag shut on all four sides. You can simply use a plastic bag with a sealed closure, but I wanted these to stay sealed no matter what, as I’m flying with them in my luggage…I took my label maker and wrote “groomsmen” on the label and attached it to the bag.

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