DIY Bout Tutorial

Je t’aime, you like? Oui oui?

For whatever reason, I feel like these bouts are French and they speak to me in broken English/French – Frenglish if you will. It probably has something to do with the guinea feathers. But don’t tell my Dad because after Sept. 11, he’s been calling them Freedom Fries and there’s no convincing him that French speaking bouts are funny.

AnyBout, if DIY bouts are up your alley and you were wondering how, wonder no more. I’m going to give you a Bout Tutorial. Or a Bout Toot as I keep saying in my head, because right along with French speaking bouts, Bout Toot is hilarious!

To start, I browsed Etsy to get a sense of the look and feel I was going for. Once I saw feathers incorporated into a few, I knew it was for me. I then gathered some supplies:

Pearl accent flowers (found in picks 3-4 in a bunch in the wedding aisle at Michael’s)
Package of black feathers
Package of white feathers
Package of guinea feathers
Package of scrapbooking Leaves
Evergreen bunch from silk flower section
A few yards of vintage seam binding in black and ivory from Etsy
Black velvet ribbon from Etsy
Pearlized round things
Misc. buttons
Pearl headed corsage pins
Green floral tape

There are a few lessons I learned:
1. The glue gun is your friend.
2. Turn off the ceiling fan before attempting this.
End of lessons learned the hard way.

Step 1: Arrange the elements in your hand until you are happy. I like to start with a feather or whatever will be the backbone of the bout. Sometimes you have to pick through the bag for a good feather. Then you’ve got to removed some fluff (you can strip it with your fingers) so that you have a good clean “stem” to hold on to. Then I add other elements until I get tired of arranging and just want to move on with it already.



Step 2: Here is where the glue gun becomes your friend. Anything without a stem, needs to get hot glued to something with a stem.

This step is also where wire cutters come in handy. I should amend my lessons learned to include: 3. Never put your wire cutters in storage when Navy movers are involved because you don’t know when you’ll see it again. Anyways, I’ll go ghetto style with some scissors.

Step 3: Hold your elements in their desired arrangement, trim the excess stems,

and wrap what’s left in floral tape. Lesson Learned 4: Before a DIY Bout Toot, arrange all your supplies on the table so you don’t have to go searching through a bag of craft mess.

When you stretch it, the tape becomes sticky. Overlap each tie you go around so that no parts of the stem show through. Lesson Learned 5: Charge the camera battery before documenting a DIY Bout Toot. Pardon moi, I'll be right back.

...

Ok, back.

Step 4: While the camera was charging, I got my seam binding out of the bag of craft mess. I don’t cut a length, I just cut it at the end so that I don’t short change myself or waste any precious seam binding. I line the length of the back of the gathered stem with hot glue, press seam binding to it, and then wrap the seam binding from bottom back to top, securing the last bit after I cut with another dab of hot glue.


Step 5: Sometimes I add a button, or a bow. Hot glue is your friend. Then I ram a pearl headed corsage pin through. If you did more hot gluing than stem gathering, you’re going to have to weasel that pin in there.

Step 6: Repeat until you have the desired number of bouts - 15 in my case.

Ooo, la! La! As my French bouts would say!

Are DIYing for the bouts? What supplies did you use?