I’ve already been up an hour.  Went to bed fell asleep woke up about 3:00AM and could not go back to sleep.  So, I got up and decided I would work on some crafts.

I needed to come up with some decorations for our Church’s coffee bar and why not work on them since I couldn’t sleep.

The trick here is that the decorations need to be minimal with a good impact, but be able to pack them up easily.

I have 3 clear vases that are different sizes.  Phyllis and I found 3 different color of small roses for $2.99 each.  I discovered that a 12 x 12 sheet of paper, cut down to 10 x 12 worked perfect to wrap around the tallest of the vases.

I took floral tape and and ran three strips both horizontal and vertically across the top of the vase.  This creates a grid that makes holes that I could put the roses through and hold them up without having to fill the vase with foam.  I simply used a tape runner and ran a strip around the outer edges of the 10 x 12 paper.  This works well to hold the paper on the vase.  A little valentine ribbon at top, middle and bottom and the vase is done.

On the next level vase I plan on putting some foil wrapped chocolate hearts to fill the empty space.  The trick here is to put the flowers in first then drop the foil wrapped choc0late hearts down each side until it is filled.  Since it is around 4:00AM I wasn’t going to run to the store and get the hearts.

I found a cute border paper and used the MS hear punch to give it a pretty border and attached it to the vase the same way as I did on vase one.  Since the foil wrapped chocolate hearts will hold the flowers in place I didn’t need to use floral tape to create a grid on the vase opening.  Another cute ribbon and vase two is done.

Vase three is a squatty little vase and we just used a package of crinkled red confetti and filled it up.  This holds the flowers very nicely.

To add a little extra punch to this vase I used three heart Dazzles and some Flower Soft gold border.

Here is a close up so you can see what it looks like.  Very simple and with the other stuff going on with the other vases, this one didn’t need anything over the top.

Here they are all together.  I wish I had those foiled chocolate hearts to get the full affect.  This will make a nice interest piece for the coffee bar.

From here I’ll make a little heart banner for the menu board and then just scatter some 1 x 4 pieces of card stock stamped with things like “inspire, gratitude, faith, live, etc.”  I also cut out a few hearts with the word Love stamped on them to scatter around the table.

Paper crafts are an easy way to make things for very little money.  These three vases will end up costing less than $10.00 to make (for all three).  That’s decorating on the cheap.  When we are done we can reuse everything for another project.  I think that is a good thing.

Oh, coffee is done I’m going to go get me a cup!