Whether or not the decision to make my own centerpieces was a good one has yet to be seen. So far, I really like the way they’re turning out, my hands though, are TORN UP. I’ve only made 4 and I had to stop and take a break.

In order to save money on my bluebird wedding, I am resorting to hand making as much as possible. Thus far it seems to be paying off. Flower arrangements on every table really ad up quickly and it really is just out of our budget.

I am currently, however slowly, handcrafting “nest” centerpieces for our tables. The Country Club has hurricane candle holders that we are free to use and I am taking full advantage of. For some reason, I’ve always loved hurricanes. The club day-off coordinator Chris was even nice enough to let me take home a base for measuring purposes!

From copenhagenfurniture.net

As usual, I trekked off to The Flower Factory to buy my supplies. The have the widest selection of materials of any crafting store I’ve found, and usually the best prices.

On my shopping list:

feathers, dried flowers of varying types, miniature plastic eggs, twine, florists wire, extra gluesticks, pussy-willow branches, anything looking particularly ethereal, natural cotton

(having already purchased a wholesale lot of mushroom bluebirds on Ebay some time ago)

The general idea is to have a nest shaped decoration with blue birdie accents that fit around the base of the hurricanes. The hurricanes will hold deep blue candles.

At last, I am looking at (worst case scenario) 130 people dining at my wedding. If I average 8 people to a table. I have to make approximately 16 of these centerpeices. (Keeping in mind that our sweetheart table is going to have a floral centerpiece. We’re special.)

Here’s what I ended up with.

You may need more than the shown amount of beer required to dull the pain from being stabbed repeatedly by twigs and sticks. No joke, it’s rough on your hands, and for some odd reason- filthy. It leaves your hands an odd dirty brown color like no one thought it was a good idea to rinse the branches off before they bundled them up and sold them. Oh well.

I began by using Pansy Dude’s wire cutters (a must tool!) to cut the wire holding the reams of twigs together. I wrapped the garland around the base, wiring it to itself at multiple points until it was approximately circular. Two times around total made it more or less “nesty-looking” and no longer see through.

That’s really the hard part, after that point I just crammed in dried flowers and other stems as I saw necessary. Some twine woven in here and there. Anything that I thought a real bird might find and put in their nest, I stuck in.

I have large birds, and small birds. The nests with the large birds, only get 1 bird and then have eggs in their nests. The nests with the small birds have 2 birds and no eggs in their nests. Feathers tossed in for good measure.

Voila! Cheap-o centerpieces that don’t look 1/2 bad if I do say so myself. (I didn’t even rip this one off from Martha! Another Pansy original! Go me.)

The aftermath:

Maybe this was a job better suited for out on the back deck? Meh. Hindsight is 20/20.