Thursday, March 13, 2014

Branch Tree Centerpiece Tutorial

For our daughter, Cassie's, wedding, we decided to make the centerpieces.  She wanted branches in a vase, with crystals hanging on them.

Good thing our trees needed to be pruned.  We cut them down and then let them sit for a week.  
This made it so much easier to get the leaves off.



 



To make the centerpiece vases, I started with yogurt cups.  I taped two of them together and put a rock at the bottom, so it would be heavier. 



Next, I gathered the branches I wanted to use for the vase.  Some of them I had to add one large branch, with a couple of small branches, to get the roundness I wanted for the centerpieces.  For the ones that were on the Candy, Photo Booth, and Gift Tables, I had them more flat in the back, since they were going against a wall.   I placed them inside the yogurt cups and filled them with Plaster of Paris.   I painted the yogurt cups a light color, so they wouldn't show thru the vases.  You can also remove the yogurt cups if you want.







I then placed them in the vase and filled them with crystals.  We got the crystals from Hobby Lobby when they were 50% off.  If the vase is tall, You can add another yogurt cup to the bottom and place a rock in it, like I did in this picture.


 Then, put the branches on top of that.


This is one of my first attempts.  You could see the yogurt cup, so that's 
why I started painted them white first.




At the moment, this is the best picture I have.  I'll add more, when I get them.  
We added long crystals to them, which we also got from Hobby Lobby at 50% off.








I was concerned about having a glass vase on the gift table, when it was outside, so we made one of the them in a pail.  I spray painted it with the silver glitter paint and made it the same as the ones in the vases.  We added Plaster of Paris to the sides as well.


Next, we made 4 big trees.  They were about 5 to 6 feet tall.  We had two of them by the stage and the other two we placed near the photo booth and candy table.  Here is how we made them.

I bought plastic buckets from Hobby Lobby.  I think they were about $3.00 each.  I painted them grey first.  A metallic silver would have been better though.  Then, I spray painted them with silver glitter paint.  I placed a piece of foam in the middle and stuffed newspapers around the foam.  We filled them with Plaster of Paris.  The newspaper was mainly so we didn't have to use so much of the Plaster Paris.  We used one box per tree.




























We added large crystals to the bottom.









 That's my beautiful grandson with one of trees at the reception.  One of the crystals fell off and he was trying really hard to get it back on.



The hardest part of it all, was getting them to the venue.  We took them out of the vases and wrapped each one in a garbage bags so they wouldn't get entangled.  We were able to fit more of them in a car this way.

 These are half of them.  We took the other half in our car.



  It didn't take that long to fill each vase with the crystals at the venue.






The branches were definitely the biggest project we had for Cassie's reception, but they turned out so pretty.   There are so many ways they could have been displayed.  They could have been painted, as well.  Good luck if you try this and let us see what you come up with.



























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