How to Finish Your Boutonniere

Hi, I am Kara Beckett and today I am showing you how to make a boutonniere. Right now I am going to finish off the boutonniere by adding a little bit of ribbon to the stem, just to cover up our stem tape and just give it a little bit of a finished look. So, what I want to do is cut off -- I will probably leave about three or so inches onto this boutonniere, but I want to cut off the excess. So, I will just cut that right off. So, now I am going to take a little bit of sheer ribbon, whatever color you like. I am going to start down at the base, very bottom of the stem, and I am just going to roll this right on. It's going to hold onto itself, I don't know if you can see that well, but it's going to hold onto itself as I roll up, nice and tight. When I get to the top I am going to go ahead and cut some ribbon off, but I am going to leave myself some extra length. So, now I want to tie it off. I am just going to cut this extra bit of ribbon down, and under my last roll of ribbon tuck that right through. Then I am just going to pull it tight, so we have that. Now, what I am going to do is just -- I am going to leave a little tail of this on, just to give it a little decorative look, but I am going to dovetail the end here. So, now we are left with this. Now, what I would like to do -- you could leave it just like this, but what I like to do is sort of curl this end up so that this ribbon stays on a little bit better. So, I am just going to bend the wire back on itself. You could make a curly q, you could do it all different ways, but I just kind of like to tuck it back up and sort of behind the back of the wire, and that way we've got kind of a finished look there. Now, all I want to do is just stick in a couple of boutonniere pins. That's our final product. What you would like to do is store this in your refrigerator right until you are ready to use it for your event. It will maintain itself for a couple of days actually if it's kept cool. So, go ahead and put it in your refrigerator, and when you're ready, take out the boutonniere and pin it on.