DIY dogwood branches

I found another fun thing to do with sticks. I love the look of just plain sticks but sometimes I like them to have something a little more, like a flower. There are so many beautiful floral stems but the ones I'm drawn to are always very expensive, probably because they are so realistic. Anyways, this challenged me to make my own. So, I started with some sticks that just happened to be from a Dogwood tree but you could use any sticks you can find. I like to find sticks that have as many branches as possible instead of straight scraggly ones. So, I spray painted all my sticks dark brown so they would all be uniform in color but if you could skip this step if you like more variation. Then I found this floral bush at Hobby Lobby for $5. I plucked all the flowers off. The great thing about this particular bush is that it had different sizes of flowers and even little buds. I used them all. I just hot glued them to the sticks where I thought the flowers would naturally be. They look surprisingly realistic! You could do this with any type of flower and they are so inexpensive and easy to do!



Here they are in my dining room...

I liked them so much that I made some for a bridal shower I just did.  The bride really liked them and we are able to use them again for her reception which is much better than real flowers!

I added limes to the vases to freshen things up.  I used two separate vases, one inside the other, to hold the limes in place.  I thinly sliced them and slid them in between the two vases.  Then I added water to keep them fresh and add another dimension.

I added some clear marbles to the vase inside the larger vase to hold the branches in place.  So easy and I think they are really elegant. 

Hope you all had a great weekend!