Star Wars Comic Book Wedding Button Holes.

When me and my wife got married we wanted to do as much as we could ourselves, invites, gifts, decorations etc. we did this for many reasons, one was to save money and another was because we wanted to have a personal touch for our guests.

We decided to make the button holes for the wedding party. We decided to make paper flowers so we could make them well in advance of the wedding when we had more time and thus save us rushing closer to the wedding. (and we really like the look of paper flowers.)

This instructable is how we made 1 of the button holes, we needed 14 of these so it took us a while and we got some sore fingers from all the folding but we feel it was worth it.

Tools.

-Pliers and wire cutters.

-Knife or scissors.

-Ruler or straight cutting edge

-Pencil or pen

Materials.

-Comic book pages. (or double sided printed out images, which is what i used)

-Florists wire, thin gauge wire.

-Glue (glue gun, contact glue etc. to be used to glue paper)

-Ribbon or paper (colour of your choice.)

Im sure there is something i have missed out (sorry)

But i would advise you to read the whole instructable before starting.

Get your double sided prints or comic book pages.

We used some black and white comics and colour comics. the reason for this will come later.

The comic books we chose were Star wars comics as we had a slight star wars theme running throughout our day and we thought it would be fun to have them in the formal parts too. :)

The first thing i did was trim the papers edges off (as the printer i used couldn't print Border-less.) I trimmed up to the edge of the comic panels not the colour as we wanted to be able to see as much of the comics as possible.

Cut the trimmed black and white comics in to 5cm wide strips, and cut the colour comics int strips 7cm wide.

Then cut the black and white strips into 5cm squares, and the colour strips into 7cm squares.

Making the petals out of the paper squares.

Im showing the smaller black and white petals, but the colour ones are exactly the same.

1. Fold the square from one corner to the opposite corner, to make a triangle.

2. Fold the lower right tip up to the top of the triangle. Then do the same fold to the lower left tip.

3. Stand up the two folds from the last step, and gently press the fold down to open up the fold. press and fold both side in this way. (see photos for help in understanding this step.)

4. Fold the tip of the opened fold you just did and fold it up and down over the fold you just pressed down. (again see the photo for help) Do the same to the other side.

5. Now fold one of the two upside-down triangles, you just made, in half. (see photos.) do this to both sides.

6. now its time to glue the petal together to make 1-5th of the flower. Put glue on the outer edges of the fold from step 5. and press the sides together to form a little cone like structure.

I also found out that a pair of thin pliers or strong tweezers were really useful to get to the bottom of the petal and hold it together while the glue dries

Do this 5 times for each flower.

We did 2 small black and white flowers, so 10 petals, and 1 Colour flower ,so 5 colour petals.

We had to make 14 complete button holes for the wedding party, so that meant we needed 70 colour petals and 140 black and white petals. We did alot of folding and cutting for most of our evenings for a week or two.

Using the wire i cut it to a length longer than i thought i needed it (this gives you more options later on.)

For the main flower (colour flower for us) i gave the wire a little bend at the end to give the glue something to hold onto, so the flower wouldn't fall off or get knocked/pulled of during the wedding.

Starting with one petal glue it to the wire. Then put one more petal on at a time until you have the full set of 5 on the wire.

Repeat the gluing onto the wire with the smaller black and white petals.

Once the petals have been glued to their respective wires leave them to dry/set.

when all the glue has dried its time to fix all three flowers together.

Bend the smaller flowers wire at the base of the flower so when the wires are held together they tilt down and fit under the main colour flower.

Then glue the smaller flowers underneath the main flower and tape the wires together to support the glue.

Once all the glue has set i trimmed the wire shorter so that the stem of the Button hole is not too long when place on the lapel.

Using the coloured paper or ribbon* we wrapped the metal wires to make the whole thing look neater.

We first used a large piece of ribbon and cut into a leaf shape and placed it at the back of the coloured flower, this ribbon extended down the stem a small way, so when the stem is wrapped it will cover the leaf.

Next using a long piece of ribbon we started wrapping the stem at the top just behind the flower (so its hidden from sight) and wrapping it round the stem slightly overlapping the wrap above and gluing all the way down to keep it in place until we got to the bottom of the stem and we glue it on and tuck in under the bottom and trim off the excess ribbon.

*We used green ribbon as the nature of the fabric of the ribbon makes it easy to use a large pin to pierce the stem to allow for better attachment to the peoples suits etc.

When the big day arrives distribute the button holes to the wedding party and help each other put them on as it can sometimes be a little hard to put one on yourself :)

The fact that these are made of paper means that people can keep them and they wont wilt or dry out like normal flowers will.

We had 2 weddings and the fact we had made the paper flowers meant that they would travel a lot better than real flowers would. (suitcases, aeroplanes etc.)

i hope you enjoyed (or at least found it informative) my instructable. please comment or ask questions and i will try and answer any questions you have.

thanks.