Wednesday, November 9, 2011

All That Glitters

I'm very much into glittered objects right now. Whether it be faux fruit or veg, no inanimate object can get away from my glitter grasp. There is just something about it. So. Very. Sparkly. The first thing I got my grubs on was a pumpkin for Thanksgiving.
I bought one of those "funkins" and just applied the mod podge to a few sections at a time. I did this one in two-tone, gold and orange. I love the various types of glitter. The little shards, the very fine, the chunky. All of them look great and especially when combined. I also had an old metal star hanging around, so I grabbed that and sparkled it up.

Next I wanted to re-purpose a large glass vase, so I thought it would look cool to put glittered fruit in it. I bought a bag of various types of fake fruit, then added a few little gourds I had sitting around.

I put them all into the vase, but they didn't really show the beauty of the fruit. I think if it the vase was a large cynlinder, it would be perfect. Instead, I put it on the old stand-by. The cake/candy platter I painted a million colors, and it is now my favorite color...matte black. You can't lose with matte black, it seems to go with every single holiday's decor. When I piled them on top of the little plate, it looked perfect. I'm definitely using all of these glittery things for the tablescape for Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Saving Vase



 When I first saw this in a magazine, it looked more like a Halloween craft, but I decided to switch it up a little to make it last through the Autumn season. They had painted various parts of a tree in black paint onto a bunch of pumpkins, then set them on various shelves. When they were all set up, it looked like a finished tree. Very cool. My biggest problem I had with this was the cost of the pumpkins. Wow, what a tightwad. But it's hard for me to spend all of that time on something, and then it will just go bad in a few weeks. The other option was to use faux pumpkins, which are pricey also. Unless you get them at the after-Halloween sale at the craft stores.
As I was roaming through Savers looking for Halloween costume stuff, I decided to try something way cheap, and different. Vases.
There was a huge shelf of $1.00 vases, which made me really happy. I bought a bunch, brought them home and sprayed them inside and out with a few coats of metallic copper spray paint. Then I had some leftover gold glitter spray, so I sprayed them with that,which added a little bit of dimension to the vases.

 My other big complaint about this project was having to hand-paint a tree onto these vases. It really sounded overwhelming to me. Just as I was about it give in, I found a large wall sticker of a tree at Hobby Lobby in the bargain bin. Yes! I cut it into pieces, and they stuck right onto the vases. I did need to use a little glue to get them to lie down flatter.

I arranged them on the shelves and it turned into a pretty inexpensive and unsual decoration. They do look beautiful with candles in them, which adds a little glow. I did that at Halloween, but I like them natural like this for the Autumn season.

Hope you all had a great Halloween and on to Thanksgiving!