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I have had questions regarding the centerpieces we did and so I thought I'd post a DIY to let everyone know how they were done.
As to the branches. I bought them off of ebay after my disasterous experience on weddingbee.com where I purchased them and never got them. You can get 4 premium manzanita branches for $25 plus $25 shipping. (1 for each vase) $12.50 each. Be sure to tell the vendor that you want straight bottoms and want the tops to be well centered over the bottom. If they are one-sided they will turn over in these vases. If the bottom is crooked it won't work either. The curly willow I found locally and a lady let me have the bottom branches of her tree for these centerpieces (sweet).
We had to spray paint the branches all silver. (Spray paint - about $7 a can and for the 24 branches I had, we used about 10-12 cans of spray paint, maybe more) (Be sure to buy ones of those trigger type devices
for the spray paint or your finger will fall completely off! We layed out huge tarps, layed all the branches on it, and spray painted away. After they were all painted, we started over and squirted Aleene's glue on them one at a time. Kinda up and down the branches and back and forth. Then we had a garbage bag with lots of silver glitter, I bought German glass glitter to add - it was expensive and probably not worth it - Silver sequins (good) and bugle beads (good). Probably 1/2 gallon - but I had tons of it left over. Put a big tarp under it to catch the overflow - roll the top of the garbage bag down and be SURE TO WEAR GLOVES OR YOU WILL NEVER GET THAT GLITTER OFF YOUR HANDS. AS a matter of fact - wear them the whole time.... Then we just heldthe branches over the glitter and reached in and drizzled handfulls of that glitter over the branch. Then stood the branches up in the big boxes they were shipped to us in to set and started the glue on the next branch. The glue will dry fast so dont try to get ahead of yourself with the glue process. I bought the crystals off of ebay. Bought several huge lots - 700 - 800 crystals to a lot and some new ones - like 50-100 for $27.00 or maybe a little more but they were beautiful. I also found I could spray paint and glitter lots of things to put on those branches! Cheap ornaments and icicles from the Dollar Store are gorgeous painted and glittered! I think even cheap silk flowers could be glittered. We set up zip lock bags for the number of centerpieces we had and took the crystals and started dropping the same kind of crystals in each bag to try to evenly distribute them among the centerpieces so that they would have approximately the same amount and kind of crystals on them. Anyway - you set a table up at the reception hall and make the arrangements all in one place. The glitter will get all over the place so keep that in mind. You might want to buy one of those cheap plastic tarps under the table you work off of to catch the extra glitter that will fall off. Put the manzanita branch down in the vase - until where the branches spread out rests on the top of the vase so it won't topple. Then fill in with the curly willow and filler branches (which were also spray painted and glittered). Then we put the crystals on them that we had put into 24 separate bags to kinda make sure we had the same stuff on each of the centerpieces. After we finished we moved them to the guest tables and put the top light in at the top of the vase. I figure we probably paid $75 or more per centerpiece plus a LOT OF WORK but they were as beautiful as any I have seen for more than triple the price. You can use any color food coloring and any color lights. When the crystals dehydrate they go back to their original form, but we just ditched ours when we were taking the stuff down.I accumulated around 3,000 crystals for 24 centerpieces and plan to use them on our Christmas trees.
posted by Ragtop1 2 years agoVery pretty
posted by krystalkingdom 2 years agowow im gobsmacked.. there awseome!
posted by ccranetobe 2 years ago(Why can't I see the pics?)
posted by fallingsnow 2 years agoWow these are breathtaking. Great job!
posted by Ms. Sapphire 2 years agoDon't know why you cant see the pics. Email me at Ragtop1@hughes.net and I will send you pics
posted by Ragtop1 2 years agoMANZANITA BRANCHES 36" (4 PACK) - FALL HARVEST SALE!!
BEST PRICE I HAVE SEEN ANYWHERE AND THE BRANCHES WERE REALLY NICE. BE SURE TO TELL HIM EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT -- IF YOU NEED FOR THEM TO BE REALLY STRAIGHT IF THEY ARE GOING IN A TALL VASE. IF YOU ARE GOING TO PUT THEM IN A POT WITH CEMENT IT WON'T MATTER BUT I WANTED MINE TO STAND UP TALL AND STRAIGHT.
IF YOU CAN'T FIND CURLY WILLOW BRANCHES, I DID SEE SOME ONLINE THAT WERE VERY REASONABLE.... WILL TRY TO FIND THAT LINK IF ANYONE WANTS IT.
i am ready to make it Ragtop! I will buy the supplies this weekend and make a trial centerpiece, thanks again for your detailed explanation!!!
posted by FinallyGettingMarried 2 years agoand I want to see the results!
posted by Ragtop1 2 years agoAnother close up shot of the centerpieces
posted by Ragtop1 2 years ago.
posted by Ragtop1 2 years ago