Kitchen Shower Crafts!

I recently threw my sister a kitchen bridal shower! It was lots of fun and I enjoyed making a few crafts for the occasion:-)

Butterfly Globes

I started out calling them butterfly balls, but then my sister's good friend (my friend too:-)) called them butterfly globes! I loved it and they really do resemble globes! I got the idea for them from one of my favorite blogs, YHL. Except, theirs is a baby mobile with flowers.



I started out with two sheets of shimmery scrapbook paper (blue & green - my sister's wedding colors), floral wire ($2 at Michael's), Tacky glue, and a Martha Stewart butterfly punch ($5 with 50% off coupon from Michael's). You will need a pair of pliers too if you don't already have some.



It was hard to get step-by-step pictures of this part, but I will do my best to describe what I did (and try not to get too distracted by my awesome polka dot pajama pants, lol!). I started out making a circle out of the wire and wrapped it around 3 or 4 times. I cute the wire and did 2 more circles. I spaced them out to make as close to a "ball" shape as I could. Then I attached them to each other by wrapping the wire around at the top and bottom. Next, I pulled the wires out, away from each other so it would fill in the spaces and have even more of a round shape. Last, I took 3 separate long strands of wire and weaved them in and out ,horizontally, giving the ball more structure and it's globe appeal. I tried to make them look even, but they definitely weren't perfect. I just wanted to be able to place the butterflies evenly around the ball.



Sorry, no pics of this next part either. But all I did was Tacky glue the butterflies to the balls. Sounds simple and it was, but it took a lot longer then I thought it would:-/ It was the first time I worked with Tacky glue. To me it seems a little more heavy duty/stickier than regular craft glue, but takes just as long to dry. Basically some took longer than others...it just depended if I had to hold in place or if it kind of stayed in place on it's own. The nice thing about it was it was so sticky that if it started to fall, it would just flip over and hang on so I would just flip it back over and hold it until it dried a bit more. So at least they weren't falling all over the place and getting glue everywhere:-) I thought about hot glue, but thought it might get messy with all those strings of glue everywhere. All in all it went well and I would probably do them the same way again, but would know to allow for more time. Also I ended up incorporating some patterned scrapbook paper (the one I used for the banner). My husband and I agreed they needed some contrast to the plain blue and green. I love how he pretends to be interested, haha. No, he really is helpful!:-)



So, what do you think? I love how they appear to be "floating"!

Dainty Doily Banner



Not sure where I got the idea for this...I wanted to add some color to my mantle for the party and I wanted the banner to be girly and tea partyish. That made me think of doilies because they're so dainty. And I thought "how easy would it be to cut out circles of scrapbook paper and glue them on top?". Well, that part was pretty easy. The tricky part was getting it to hang correctly! So here's what I did...



I started out with a couple of sheets of scrapbook paper and a pack of 30 4" doilies by Wilton for around $4 from Amazon. But Michael's has them too and for probably cheaper, especially with a coupon. I just happened to be ordering from Amazon and wasn't sure Michael's had them. I found a candle votive holder a little bigger than the inside circle of the doily and used it to trace circles on the back of my scrapbook paper. I cut them out and glued them with regular craft glue to the center of the doilies. I stuck them in a book so they would dry flat and not be all bumpy.



Next, I took a thin white ribbon and stretched it out on the floor over some magazines (to protect the floor from glue). Then, using Tacky glue (to have a stronger hold than regular glue), I glued each doily to the ribbon spacing them just so they were barely touching. I took it and held it up to the mantle to figure out how many I was going to need. I decided to do three sections of 7 (21 total) so it would hang evenly. I thought I was all finished and was super excited to go hang it up only to see that it was not going to work... :-( The doilies were turning every which a way and it was not pretty. I had a brief urge to give up, but then decided to go back to the drawing board. I originally thought about gluing them to clear string/fishing wire, but didn't think they would stick because it's so thin. But now that I had them glued on to something I could use the clear string! I just weaved it in and out of the holes at the top of each doily. This worked perfectly, forcing them to sit up straight and put their best faces forward (haha)!



You can see in the pictures above how they are glued onto the ribbon and then held up by the clear string at the top. And I simply taped the banner to the mantle with good ol' Scotch tape.

And that's it! Easy peasy and brings some life to the mantle!:-)

Other Shower Decorations:

My sister had pinned this decoration made with limes on Pinterest, originally from here.



So I gave it a try and loved how it turned out!!! Please don't judge my day old picture with bad lighting, lol! Probably shouldn't have put it next to their gorgeous picture, huh? Owell. And a word of advice if you try it for yourself...it only lasts 3 days tops! I kept it around for 5 days and it started growing stuff - yuck! A few people at the shower said how good it looked in my kitchen and that I should try to keep it all the time (refreshing it of course). It's a nice idea, but not very economical or low maintenance. Obviously I would have to change it out every few days and my container holds 18 limes!! Not cheap. Perhaps if I used a smaller container. But even then it's a little high maintenance for me. I think I'll stick to special occasions for now:-) And another great tip from my husband (who has picked up stuff like this from being in hotels) is to use sparkling water to give it a little something extra! It looked neat how the bubbles stuck on the limes.



Here's a shot of the dining room table...3 vases of flowers with a hurricane over the center vase. I wanted to use my new hurricane and wanted some flowers to brighten things up and this is what I came up with! I like how it turned out and was a new twist by using something other than candles in the hurricane.

Pssst...here's a sneak peek of the table runner I made!!! Stayed tuned for the tutorial:-)