Craft Idea: Turn Candle Holder into Flower Arrangement.

Here's a craft idea, while not using the hanging candle holder, why not turn it into an attractive flower arrangement. This is an elegant hanging candle holder that I bought from the Party Lite catalog. Beautiful good size hanging candle holder. One day I got tired of looking at the candle holder just hanging by the stair way while there's no candle burning in it. So I dig through my left over craft supplies, and found some stuff that I can turn this hanging candle holder into a hanging flower arrangement instead. With ivies hanging down to give it length, and a touch of purple flowers really turn this hanging candle holder into an attractive hanging flower arrangement.

Craft idea: From Dollar Store silk flowers to beautiful bouquet.

Would you believe me if I tell you the bouquet above is 90% made from Dollar Store silk flowers? Believe it or not, it's true. This is one of 3 bride's maid bouquets that I made for a friend's daughter wedding in November 2009. It's a Fall wedding theme. The bride loves the Fall leaves colors, but she doesn't like sunflower. So she provide me other types of flowers such as gladiolus and orchids, that she likes from Dollar Store.

Some people don't think that Dollar Store silk flowers are good enough for occasions such as wedding. Some would think that they are low quality just because the flowers are cheap. I disagree completely. With a creative mind, you can turn any cheap flowers into beautiful arrangements or bouquets.

Dollar Stores actually have a pretty nice selections on silk flowers now a days. It will definitely save you a lot money then buying wedding arrangements from floral shops. It's true that with professional, you are worry free of your wedding flowers arrangements but will definitely going to cost you. If you love doing crafts or someone you know that loves doing crafts, buy the cheap materials and make the arrangements yourself or have that craft loving someone do it for you.

This is exactly what happen here. They supply me with the materials, which are 90% from the Dollar Store. And since I love doing crafts, they've asked me to make the bridal bouquets for them. Material wise speaking, this bouquet costs less then $10 to make, where as from a floral shop, they can easily charge you over $100 especially if it is a fresh flower bouquet. (By the way, what you pay the most from floral shop arrangements is the labor cost. Some of the flowers can be cheap, but it is the labor cost for professional florist to make the arrangement that cost you a good chunk of money.) I made these bouquets for them with no charge, my excuse is.. it's my wedding gift to the family. For more of arrangements I've made for this wedding, please visit my Wedding Flower Arrangements- Home Made for more arrangements craft ideas.

Sunflower arrangement for your Fall decoration.

Fall season offers such a beautiful colours. Here's one of my bouquet idea for your Fall season display. You can have it as flower arrangement to brighten your home, or use it for Thanksgiving dinner table centerpiece, or for your Holloween display. You can use fresh flowers or silk flowers to make this. Here's what you need to put it together.

I found this bundle of sunflowers in a craft store. But as I mention before, you can use fresh sunflowers for this, altho they won't last more then 2 weeks.

* You'll need about 6-12 silk sunflowers, with each flower no more then 6" wide. If you're using fresh flowers, do note that it'll look nicer if you have at least 6 flowers. But it'll make a much bigger arrangement due to the size of fresh sunflower.

* You'll need to get some filler flowers. I use Limonium for the filler. You can easily buy a bundle of limonium from floral stores in the filler section. Not only does limonium makes a great filler for fresh flowers, it keeps really well as dried flowers as well. I use the dried limonium for all kinds of flowers arrangements I made. So you need about 2-4 branches of limonium.

* Next, you'll need about 6-12 wheat. You can buy bundle of wheat (as shown in picture) from a craft store or floral store.

* Lastly, also an optional, get some ribbons or tulle (lacey material). The tulle that I use is about a foot wide, and they are commonly use for wedding arrangements.

You'll need some sort of vase for the arrangement to sit in of course.

- So cut the flowers to desire length and put them in the vase. I do recommend a pyramid shape for the flower pattern. As in having a center flower at the highest length, and next layer of flowers will slightly be shorter in length then the middle one. Having 3 layers would be nice. You basically want a pyramid effect or a round shape in your main flower display.

- Next you cut the limonium to desire length to fill in the gap between the flowers.

- Then you cut the wheat to desire length and fill them in around the flowers. You want the wheat to stick out a bit, but not overly too much.

- And lastly, you tie your ribbon or tulle around the vase and the result is what you see.

It's really simple and easy to put together this arrangement and it makes a gorgeous display for your home. Of course, this arrangement can easily be turn into a wedding bouquet as well. So have fun putting this sunflower arrangement together and enjoy it!

Craft your own table centerpiece for Thanksgiving.

Fall has arrived, with cooler temperature and leaves are turning colors all around you. With Thanksgiving just around the corner (Canadian Thanksgiving anyways), any thoughts on your table centerpiece for your Thanksgiving dinner? Here are couple of my ideas for table centerpieces for your Thanksgiving dinner table setting. Here's how I put together the above centerpiece together.

1. I have a set of floating candle stand at home. It's about a foot tall. You can use any type of candle stands for this, just as long as it's tall enough in the center to give it height.
2. Next you find a flat plate, any plate will do just as long as it's at least 10" wide and it's flat. You place the candle stand in the middle.
3. Fill the edge of the plate with fall leaves. You can use fresh leaves, but I suggest you clean them well first and dry them with paper towel. Or you can find any fall colour leaves in any craft store at this time of year.
4. You fill all sort of fresh fruits, or artificial fruits around the base of the plate. I use couple of oranges, apples, some grapes, and bananas.
5. Then you fill the holes in between the fruits with either fresh Fall colour flowers (sunflowers for example) or artificial flowers. In the case above, I used a combination of silk flowers and dried flowers.
And the result is what you see above. It's real simple and easy to make, it is bright and beautiful, and your guests will love it too if you use fresh fruits. Makes a good fruit desert centerpiece.

This table centerpiece is actually a glass shaped gord candle holder surrounded by Fall leaves and flowers. I actually found this candle holder in a grocery store from it's seasonal items zone. It came with gord shape like this one, and a pumpkin shape candle holder. I bought a foam ring from craft store that design to use it as wreath making. But in this case, I designed it as a ring of Fall flowers for the candle holder to sit in the middle. It makes yet another good table centerpiece for your Thanksgiving dinner party, or event for a Halloween event display.

Arts & Crafts at 165th Richmond Fair

Richmond, Ontario, is about 1/2 hour of drive by car south-west of Ottawa. And for those who didn't know, Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. My in-laws moved to Richmond early this year, so that gave us a reason to visit Richmond often.

Richmond is a quiet little town surrounds by farm lands and nurseries. Every year in September, the town host a 4 days fair. This year, they celebrate 165th year of the Richmond Fair from Sept 17th- 20th. The Fair is surprising big for being such a small town. There are lots to do, and lots to see.

One of the many highlights at the fair is arts & crafts show. Pictures here are just a small portion of they have at the arts & craft show. They have quilt crafting, photo art, flower arrangements, and arts and crafts from local schools students as well. Aside from all these fantastic arts and craft show, they also have arts and crafts sales. A lot of neat and pretty crafts for sales. Read up on my hubpage about 165th Richmond Fair, or to see more photos from the fair on the hubpage.

Amazing paper crafted Castle.

I just want to share a site that i found for this beautiful Castle that is entirely crafted from paper only. It is done by Wataru Itou, a university student that spent over four years to craft this master piece. He named it “Castle on the Ocean”. It even complete with electrical lights and a moving train. This entire piece measures 2.4m by 1.8m and is 1m high. This is truly an amazing arts & crafts combine! Definitely on my list of things to visit when I go to Japan.

Paper crafted "Castle on the Ocean".

Craft Idea

Ordinary into Extrodinary.

Ever have any thing plain laying around the house collecting dust? Why not craft them up and make them more attractive and be the center of attention.

Here's one example of a fairy statue for your garden display. Since weather is starting to turn cold and winter season will soon be upon us. It is time to clean up the garden in the Fall, and start bringing in more fragile plants or statues (like this fairy here) into the house for over winter. Of course, rather then letting the fairy statue collecting dust during the winter season, you can craft it up as a centerpiece for others to admire. All I did was touch it up with flowers and greenary leaves that I have left over from other craft projects. It now becomes a display piece to brighten your home. After you crafted it up, it can stays like this in the house all year round of course, it doesn't have to be use as a garden accent at all. And if you really into painting, you can always paint the statue. Picture below is the same fairy statue I gave to my mother in-law. As you can see, she painted the statue and display it as an ornament in her house. So there are many things that you can do to turn an ordinary object into an extrodinary object. These are just couple of examples of alternative ways to display your garden statue. Happy crafting now. :)