This kid made a steel rose prom corsage for his date

Here’s a close up of the flowers. I didn’t get any progress pictures because I thought I was in a bit of a rush. I’ll try to walk you through the process though.

First, I traced the above patterns out onto a sheet of galvanized steel. Then using a combination of tin snips and and angle grinder with a cut-off wheel, I cut the general shape out and then drilled the holes. After the pieces were cut out, I used the tin snips to cut out the individual petals and then sanded off the rough edges on my belt sander. At this point, I cut out a funky “Y” looking shape from the galvanized steel that became the baseplate. I drilled five holes in it: two to attach it to the leather wristband, and three for the flowers to go on. To attach the pieces together, I clamped them all together over the holes and stuck a nail through the holes, then cut off the nails about 2 mm above the surface of the plate. Then I set the head of the nail on an anvil with everything still clamped together and peened out the 2 mm of nail into a rivet. Rinse and repeat for each flower and the attachment holes. In between each flower, I bent the petals up and made it actually look like a flower, so that I could fit the next set of plates on to the baseplate. Once all three flowers were looking like flowers, all I had to do was paint.

Here you can see the nail rivet in the center of the flower.

Before spray painting.

Here’s the whole thing. I just used spray paint to cover up the original green and white paint that was on it.

Underside. You can see four of the five nail heads. I also sanded and smoothed the heads of the nails to help prevent discomfort.

I was feeling really shaky and weird when it came time to decorate the band. My mom suggested the date and she used a stylus to put the imprints in the leather and what I guess will be my logo when I make stuff. She filled the indentations in with an artsy pen thing.

My sister modeling for me. The blue was very difficult to see in most of the pictures I took. It came out best when I shone a lamp on it from about 2 inches away.

Close up again. Honestly, this turned out waaaaaay better than I expected. I had only made one steel rose before this project and I wasn’t sure if I could do a good enough job. I sent a few pictures to one of my buds and he said that she was probably going to cry. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she instead punched me for spending so much time and effort on her. But I think she’ll like it.