Ordinary Miracles of Life: Centerpieces ~ All 24 of them

If you read my blog, you already know that I was co-chair of a fundraiser. If you don't, I was :) (you can click here or here to see/here more)

Anyway, I had ordered some centerpieces online, for our event. After I ordered all 24 of them (for a FABULOUS price) I received an order confirmation and everything seemed good to go. That is until I received a phone call a week and a half later (about the day I expected them to arrive) from the company telling me they no longer had them in stock.

UMMMM WHAT!!!!!!!

This was about 3 weeks before our event. Not much time to 1. find anything substantial for a super price (we had about $0 to work with, and the ones I had ordered were 12" tall, Hollywood themed fountains for .96¢ each) and 2. order them and get them delivered in time.

What's a girl to do?

Enter smallish boxes (think kid's shoe boxes, kleenex boxes and girl scout cookie boxes)

A few trips to the Dollar Store
Spray Paint
and
GLITTER

(DISCLAIMER ~ I did a poor job taking pictures of the process,

as I was trying to get them finished as quickly as possible)

I started by cutting holes into the bottoms of the boxes if they didn't already have holes (kleenex boxes) or were already open (shoe boxes).

Then I wrapped each box with wrapping paper ~ since our theme was Hollywood, I used gold, silver and black (8 boxes of each color)

Once the box was wrapped, using a small blade, I cut a small ✳ on the top of the box (you'll see why in a bit)

Once all my boxes had holes in the bottom, were wrapped and a small star cut in the top, it was time to accessorize them.

Here's what I used:

feathers
black plastic table cloths (clearance at target ~ otherwise I was going to use black tissue paper and I think the table cloths ended up working better!)
gold and silver mylar tissue paper
red cellophane
star garland
decorative grass (it did have some substance to it)
spray paint
glitter
black, gold and silver stars (some I cut out of card stock, some I purchased) glued onto the bamboo skewers painted in the same color
Silver garland
Black, gold and silver pipe cleaners

First I spray painted the grass ~ I painted some silver, some gold, and some black. When the spray paint was wet, I sprinkled them like crazy with glitter.

Then, I cut the tissue paper, table cloths, and cellophane into squares (or rectangles, whatever ). For each box, I used about 4 squares and alternated the colors. Once I layered them, I grabbed the pile by the center and pushed it through the ✳ shape on the top of the box.

Then it was time to add the bling.

For most of them I inserted a star (attached to a painted bamboo skewer), and added some of the glittered grass. Then depending on the box, I usually decorated the box with some type of garland or feathers.

Here are a bunch of them line up on the tops of my kitchen cabinets:

After I took these pictures I actually added some more bling to them.

I was worried about running out of materials, but once I had them all made, I went through and added more grass and garland. After all, our event was held in a school gym, so I wanted some substance, and we were working with a Hollywood theme ~ the more bling the better :)

Here are the centerpieces at work: