Auction: February 9, 2019 Garden Party Auction Night Of

 Here are some pictures of the night of.  We have lights that dim so it looks really nice.  This is the bar area.

 Here's what the seating looked like.  We had 30 seating tables.  Everyone really liked how it looked and we had a great night.

Auction: February 9, 2019 Garden Party Hanging Decorations

I saw a pin of these paper chain a while back and I knew that I wanted to make them for something.  Then the Garden Party Auction theme came up and I knew they would be perfect.  I looked for some tutorials and there a few helpful ones but they never showed what each individual piece looked like.  I took the above picture so you can see the kind of pieces I made.  Everything is from 1.5x12" paper.  The paper came from the left overs of the envelopes I made.   The first one I made I stapled together, which was a mistake, it looked awful and I threw it away.  After that, I hot glued them all.  There are 5 strips of 1.5x11" paper that I glued end to end which was the base that all the pieces are glued to.  There are 6 sets to each streamer.

 I had originally made 7 streamers in August and thought that would be good.  As the time came closer and I started finalizing how many of the streamers I would need I realized I would need 40 total.  They were hung in groups of 5 from pvc pipes, so I needed to get going on the streamer making.  I eventually used up a pack of printed paper that I've had for nearly 15 years plus all the extras from the envelopes.  It was also a good thing I took that picture of how the pieces were made because I had forgotten how I did it when I started on them again a few months later.

Here's how the pieces look close up, and this is how they all came together the night of.  I realized I don't have pictures of all 8 but they were all pretty.  I used brown craft paper to back the flowers on top and a clamp at each end to attach them to the pvc pipe on top.

Auction: February 9, 2019 Garden Party Large paper flowers

 I used various dies for the large flowers throughout the auction.  I had spent a lot of time looking at different flowers and I loved the really huge ones.  I decided not to go that route in the end as those usually take a lot of paper and can be expensive to make just one.  I had a gym to decorate and I wanted to make my budget next to nothing.  All these big flowers, except for the red ones, came from 1 large mixed package of cardstock from Office Depot.  Each flower takes 8 pages of paper. 

 I do like using the cardstock for these flowers,  it makes them very durable.  I made my large ones a little different from the instructions.  The petals aren't joined except for the 2 center pieces.  I used a 3" circle as the base to glue the petals down.  By having the petals as individual petals and not joined, I found I could make them a little bigger.

 I used David Tutera Framelits Large Rose, Large Dahlia, and Large Peony, and Leaf dies.  I also used my Cricut Explore Air to make large leaves and berries to add some interest.

 When I first made flowers, I tried to make them more 3-dimensional.  After a while, meaning I had used up a small package of white and red card stock, I realized these were going to be hard to attach to a wall.  I put these in a box and switched to making all my other large flower lay flatter.  When I went to make all the board designs and came on the box of these flowers, I didn't know what to do with them.  I had made a lot and didn't want to waist them, so they became bleacher decorations. 

 I wanted to spruce up our gym bathrooms a little so flowers went in there as well.

 As you can see, the problem with a gym is that things tend not to stick.  I had to be careful not to use anything that would mess up the paint or would be permanent.  I used repositionable glue dots but we had to add a few more to some of them.

This was my version of a flower wall.  There are 2 large insulation boards in the back.  I covered the whole thing in brown craft paper and then stapled all the flowers to it.  I added leaves and butterflies.  I really like the look of adding them.  I think the add extra interest.

Auction: February 9, 2019 Garden Party Swags

 Here are the swags that I made for the tables. The letters and flowers are just taped onto curling ribbon.  I make my dining room table the length I need for the tables the swags will go on.  I don't have a craft room, just my dining room table.

 Here's what they looked like all dressed up on their tables.

Auction: February 9, 2019 Garden Party Wine bottle covers

I usually make 40 wine bottle covers for our wine pull.
I had about 1.5 yards of this yellow print fabric already.
I made a simple bag and used my punched flowers and
 curling ribbon to make the tags.














I don't have a better picture of  all the bottles all together but they looked really nice all bunched together.

Auction: February 9, 2019 Garden Party Centerpieces

 Here are some of the finished centerpieces.  They are a combination of flowers made from punches, flowers made from dies, and flowers made from my Cricut Explore Air machine.

 In the corner, you can see a stack of the bases.  I just used 2 paper bowls and an oval paper plate.  I spray painted them silver.  I glued two bowls together at the bases and then added the plate on top.  I used ribbon to cover the joint between the two bowls.  I already had 4 rolls of this ribbon from some past project I couldn't remember and I just had to get 2 more rolls to finish the 30 centerpieces.











I used 11 x 12" paper cut with slits 1" from the top and 3" from the bottom to make the lanterns.  There is a sheet of transparency plastic that I rolled into a tube and then wrapped the slit paper around in the middle.  I used a die cut butter fly from Cricut Cuttlebug Anna Griffin Butterfly Trio.  Each centerpiece had 1 big butterfly and 2 little ones on them.  I bent them along their middles to give them a little more dimension.

 I used David Tutera's Sizzix Framelits Leaf die for almost all of my leaves.  I went through my green card stock in various colors.

 I used my Cricut Explore Air machine to make all the berries in various colors.

 When the centerpieces were placed on the tables, I lit them by putting a tea light on top of a small plastic cup.  The tea light sat too low inside the middle other wise.

 I really enjoyed making all of these.  They were super pretty when done.  They were great because they were lightweight, and because everything was glued on, they were pretty durable.  The only problem was that you couldn't stack them.  I had them all over my house before the auction.

 Here's what they looked like all in a row waiting to go on their tables.

Here's an example of what it looked like finally placed.  I made the brown paper centerpiece snowflakes for every table.  Your local Home Depot or Lowes is a great place for paper supplies.  The brown paper comes in a large roll and is used by painters.  It's much cheaper than kraft paper.  I found a flower snowflake pattern online and enlarged it to fit my paper.  Each circle was about 30" in diameter.  They were pretty easy to make but because the paper was thick, they were harder to cut.