The Center of Attention at 90

Every good party needs centerpieces, so playing off the party invitations, I created a centerpiece.   It wasn't easy and took a lot of trial and error to get the perfect design.

I immediately new that I wanted to use Craft Foam.   It's easy to cut and has a great finished look.  So I went to AC Moore in search of materials.  I bought about 6, 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of craft foam in red, sparkly red, and light blue.   But I couldn't find sparkly light blue sheets.  Now I was stumped.  Do I do it in a flat blue?  No, that wouldn't look right.  I thought about buying sparkly blue foam visors, which I would have cut up, but I ended up finding a package of small sheets in multiple sparkly colors, that luckily included the blue.   Unfortunately it meant that I ended up with orange, green, yellow, and pink sheets of sparkly foam that I didn't need.

Then I found the stars.   This was the best find, since the napkins have primary color stars on them.  These stars would help me to tie everything together.   They come in a package, called Fibre Craft Foam Glitter Stars, and they are self adhesive.

I then bought wire sticks, small floral foam blocks, and craft glue.  Then at Christmas Tree Shop I found the baskets for $1.00 a piece and at the Dollar Store I found the red shred.   Then I bought foam board at CVS to create stable numbers.

I started by making the 9s.  I blew up the invitation and traced the 9 onto the foam board (9 times).  Then using a matte knife I cut the foam board out.    To make the bases for the 0s, however, I didn't use this process.   Instead, we, and by we I mean Jason, actually cut the foam board with a circle saw, which made a perfect O.

Once all my numbers were cut out and ready to be covered, I traced the 9s onto the back side of the red sparkly craft foam, and the 0s onto the back side of the blue sparkly craft foam, then I cut them out.

Using a Kodak Printer and Kodak Paper, I printed out the photo of my grandfather (9 times) as a 3x5.   I then cut the pictures out and used scrap book glue to paste them onto the cardboard 9s.   Then I carefully glued the red sparkly 9 over the photo, onto the board, creating a frame out of the center of the 9.

Hint - trace every single cardboard number, because they might not be cut the same.   You want the piece cut out of the craft foam to fit perfectly onto the foam board number.

After covering both the 9s and 0s with the sparkly craft foam, I flipped them over and traced the backs of the numbers onto the solid blue and solid red craft foam, to cover the back sides.  Again I cut out the pieces out and glued them on.  But I wasn't happy with the ugly white, jagged edges from the foam board.  To fix this I ended up cutting 1cm strips and covering the edges of the numbers with these strips.  It took a lot more craft glue to get these strips to stay in place then it did to glue on the solid pieces.   It was a real pain, but it paid off.   They looked so much better after the edges were covered.   Once my numbers were finally finished and looking near perfect, each number got placed on a wire stick.

The stars were the easy part.  Using the self adhesive sides I paired stars of like colors and stuck them together with the wire sticks in the middle.

Now it was time to assemble: 

While trying to put it all together, I quickly found that I had to glue the floral foam into the bottom of the baskets to keep the whole design from falling over.    But then I realized that the baskets were still unstable and rather then the foam falling within the basket, now the whole basket might fall over with all the pieces stuck in them.  How do I get them to stand up straight?  I ended up buying gravel chips (pebble size) at $4.00 for a GIANT bag at Home Depot. I spread the rocks around the floral foam in the basket and the problem was solved.   This will also serve as a weight if I tie balloons to each basket.

To assemble the centerpieces, I lifted the baskets' handles and stuck the 9s and 0s in so that they crossed over the handles for stability.   Using the craft glue I glued the 9s and 0s together in one spot and clamped them to dry; this locks the numbers into place and kept the baskets centered and stable.   For ones that proved less stable, I also glued the wires into place on the foam.   Once the numbers were dried into place I carefully added the stars, cutting the wires were necessary to vary the heights.  The result was better then I hoped.

When it was all done and in place, dry and stable, I added the red shred and got a beautiful effect.   Still something was missing, so I got red ribbon and carefully glued the ribbon in 3 spots along the top edge of the basket.  Then I tied the front into a simple but pretty bow.

I am really excited about the centerpieces and can't wait for everyone to see them.