Centerpieces... Nearing the home stretch

     Well, where we last left the saga was with the need for a trip to the dollar store. Nothing is ever that easy. They didn't have any vases with thin necks that weren't hugely tall, but they did have a couple of Valentine vases. We brought one of those home and another, thinner vase to work with and make decisions.  We decided we liked the Valentine vase, but since it was wide, the wires would tip over. We knew we had a lot of sand we could fill the vases with, but that meant we had to line them, so the sand wouldn't show. Of course the vases weren't exactly cylinders, but slightly tapered. Here is a photo of DH working on a template for the paper liners.

     While, he worked on that I cut out hearts from Plantin Schoolbook, with the Roly Poly Feature Key sized at 2 1/4 inches to fill page. I made them in both pink and red. They were embossed with a number of different embossing folders.  My DH even learned how to use the Big Shot ;- )

     Next I used the Gypsy to cut out the Emoticons, Phrases (these were sized smaller) and Speech Bubbles (also sized smaller) from Smiley Cards. Spent a "fun"evening gluing all that together. 

     As I mentioned in a earlier post, I hid many of the cuts to streamline the smilies, leaving out the cheeks, highlights and some tongues. I'm only slightly crazy. I think they turned out cute though.  I drew the black dot eyes on the ones, that have the large white eyes. We don't have a good way of getting 21 of these vases to Church, so we decided to take the cut-outs, vases, wires and sand separately and then this Sunday, the teens can help assemble them during Open Youth Lounge. We thought that assembled and put in a box they would catch on each other and get tangled. Here are some of the wires on my family room floor.

     And finally, here is what they will look like, except...... when my husband said he was able to get all of the vases at the dollar store he stopped at this morning, they were the wrong vases. Just noticed that after we were all done. Instead of the one I'll show you, they are full of red hearts and lady bugs. He's now decided he likes the ones he bought better. Good! Done! Also we have red tape, but no black or pink, right now. Hope to tomorrow. I had yellow, but I forgot the smilies have black backs, also have white, but thought pink was better for the speech bubbles. So, this is a close approximation.

     Well, considering they assigned this to me because when we did the Hoedown and centerpieces were mentioned, someone said, "We'll talk about that if there is time." I knew that meant no centerpieces. I said that I could cut something and all I did was cut a Scarecrow from Oct. 31st, a Cowboy boot from Just Because Cards and a Pumpkin (can't remember which, maybe from Stretch Your Imagination on Blackout), made them double sided, and attached them to straws which we then stuck in tin cans, this is amazing. LOL Thanks for following this od(d)yssey. Should be retuning to cards and such again, but maybe this helped inspire those moms out there stuck on banquet duty. If so, costs for 20 = $12 in wire and $20 in vases. The sand was free from our town ages ago and the paper was donated from the Church. The reason I gave you the cost for 20 is because the 2 sets of wire only made 20 we have to spend another $6 to make 1 more. It's never easy ;- ) Have a wonderful and blessed weekend.