Vintage jewelry brooch bouquet.

I love working on brooch bouquets, but this one was particularly special. A bride-to-be handed over a beloved collection of her late grandmother's vintage jewelry and asked that I make a brooch bouquet for her for her upcoming wedding. I was to use every single piece of jewelry, which I found to be challenging; how do I incorporate gold and silver chains? What to do with the broken jewelry? How do I make some of the less "pretty" pieces presentable? Luckily, I had permission to disassemble the jewelry if needed, so long as every piece was present on the bouquet. 

I was working with a decent stash of jewelry, but it still was not enough to fill a bridal-sized bouquet, so I decided to start with a bouquet made of fabric flowers. I made flowers in various sizes, shapes, and sizes using different materials; satins, organzas, laces, and ribbon. I worked with the jewelry in two ways; I used bigger and broken pieces to fill the bouquet in between the fabric flowers, and the smaller or awkward pieces (such as the chains) were used on the flowers as accents. 

The bouquet turned out wonderfully and the bride-to-be was thrilled. Not only did she hold her grandmother close by on her wedding day, the bouquet now serves as a sentimental keepsake that she will cherish for decades to come. I love the idea of passing this bouquet on for generations to come, with each owner adding in some of their favourite jewelry pieces!

Photo courtesy of Rice Photography (www.ricephotography.ca)