SCK Tries… Dahlias in Bloom Bouquet Kit

It’s another edition of SCK Tries where we try out a DIY to see how it works in real life and whether we’d recommend you give it a go. This time it’s a felt flower kit by The Handmade Florist that I got for my birthday.

The Original DIY

The Handmade Florist creates original felt kits to make all kinds of flowers, plants and wreaths. I made a cottage garden bouquet a few years ago and was keen to try another project. This Dahlias in Bloom kit really appealed to me as you create a colourful full display with Dahlias in 3 different stages, plus 2 types of leaves. It’s all done with hot glue as well so no sewing required.

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Kit Contents & Materials

The kit includes everything you need – sheets of felt, felt balls, florist wire & tape, templates, full colour instruction booklet, and even online videos. You can tell it’s a high quality kit straight away as there’s lot of thoughtful touches, like an envelope of marked felt swatches and guides to laying out your templates to avoid waste. You do also need scissors and a glue gun.

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Process

The unfortunate thing about these kits is that there’s a few fairly tedious and fiddly tasks you have to do before you get to make any pretty flowers! Covering the thin wire in barely-sticky crepe tape is my least favourite part but it does make the stems look more realistic.

Cutting out all the felt pieces is more enjoyable but there are A LOT of them so you do need to pace yourself and put on a movie or two while you work. The guides are really essential here as there’s not a lot of extra felt and you could easily run out if you wing it. On the upside, you don’t need need to be super exact with your cutting since flower petals are not all perfect either, and they do look lovely all stacked up together.

Making the flowers is the fun part and it’s really quite thrilling to see them come together. Some of the techniques are really very clever – the buds look sweet and those purple Muscari are really simple to make and yet look so complex. You have enough materials to make 2-4 each of each type and I definitely improved as I went on.

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The End Result

Here’s my finished bouquet – isn’t it pretty? I was a bit nervous about the full bloom Dahlias as they have so many petals but it was all techniques I’d learned along the way so ended up being easier than I expected. It all turned out very close to the shop photo too – I do have a few flowers and leaves that are a bit dodgy but they still look fine from a distance and are easily hidden in the back. I had to fold up the wire stalks a lot to fit in this vase but a bit of tissue paper hides all that.

I really enjoyed this kit and since I have the templates and instructions, and some leftover supplies, I might make some more. The Handmade Florist even sells the felt and supplies separately. If cutting all the felt pieces doesn’t put you off, then I’m sure you’d enjoy this kit too. You learn a lot of different techniques and the finished bouquet is certainly worth all the work.

If you’d like to try this, The Handmade Florist (UK) sells a range of kits, PDF patterns and supplies through their main shop and Etsy. Hannah is also currently running a Makealong with a simple free pattern sent out every month so that would be a good way to see if you’d enjoy a full kit.