MSU-Northern Foundation Ball

Hello, it has been quite a while.  I was looking at my posts last night and realized how long it had actually been.  I have been pretty busy preparing the decorations for the MSU-Northern Foundation Ball and time has been getting away from me pretty easily.  I thought I was doing pretty well, then the whole family got sick.  Isaac showed signs first but he also gets a few cold symptoms when he is teething.  Then when Eli and I got sick and Isaac wasn't wanting to play at all, things didn't go well in our house.  We were all pitiful and grumpy, Isaac started getting better first which sucked! I got a little worse when he was getting better so trying to keep him busy and happy wasn't easy.  He liked when I would read to him but my throat was hurting so it was hard to speak.  He would want me to play and I'd be achy and low on energy.  Luckily, I'm starting to get better.  Still a little stuffy and getting pressure headaches (and caffine headaches cause coffee has been taking more effort than I have the energy for in the mornings), but Eli is pretty good to go, Isaac is just teething now, and hopefully I will be completely healed by the end of the week for the MSU-Northern Ball, Mardi Gras!!
I'm guessing you aren't reading this to hear about me and my sick family so let's get to it.  I have been debating if I wanted to post these or not.  The photos are from when I was working on the mock-up designs for the ball.  They aren't the best photos and when I was able to take the photos I didn't have a few of the items in yet.  I thought about waiting until we got things set up for the ball, but we didn't choose some of the mock-up designs and for those that want some insight on how I work or how to come up with centerpiece ideas, I wanted to talk about some of the goods and bads of the process.

For this event, I was hired on after they set the date, chose a theme, and even after they had come up with a few decoration ideas.  During our first meeting, they brought this:

This was a big help as I had an idea of what they would like.  They said lots of feather, glitter, and the colors were purple, green, gold, and black.  We talked about what they liked and didn't like about each photo.  The following are what I came up with...and your imagination is needed with a few of them.

I made them one with a mirror to see if they liked it.  Mirrors are good to add demention and because they make it look like there is more on the table since they reflect what is already on the table.  Imagination time: add a variety of masks on sticks and a street sign.  The tables are reserved so each one will have a street name that corresponds to the group that has purchased that table.

Sorry about the blurry photo here. Not sure what happened with that. This is the same idea as the previous but with a boa around the bottom. They decided on this idea with different boas on the bottom so that not every table is the same. The photo below is what the hurricane would look like on a charger. I had it as an idea because they had lots of chargers that were free reign and could be painted or whatever we needed to do with them.

 

In order to have something to set the boas on, we used their hurricane vases and hot glued them to the chargers they had.  We will be wrapping the boas around the base to cover the chragers.

 I tried it wrapped with tinsle thinking it would add a little sparkle and shine and be a little cheaper than boas.  I ended up not liking this idea because it didn't look the same in life as I had pictured it.

 

 This is a cylinder vase filled with a boa.  I thought it'd be a way to incorporate feather in the centerpieces other than being wrapped around the base.  They wanted more than one type of centerpiece so I was trying to come up with a few other idea.  The boa looked a lot more squished into the vase than I thought it would.

 

 I tried it with actual feather to see if I liked it better. Nope.  I also tried sprinkling feather around (like many do with gems) and I ended up not liking this either.  I did take both photos and supplies in case they liked it.

 

I thought maybe a boa wrapped about a vase would look kinda cool. Now there are multiple types of boas.  The one shown is a chandelle style with bigger feathers, there are also marabou that are fuzzier.  When I pictured this and didn't turn out the way I pictured, I was slightly disappointed.  I decided that I must have been picturing it with the marabou style. Well, I decided maybe the tinsel would look better....

 

 Nope.  Didn't look any better.  I had another style vase that the Foundation already had, and another style tinsel.  So I thought I'd try a different way.

 

Now, I had imagined this filled with the clear stones that you see people put in vases, fish bowls, and scatter on the table.  The Foundation already had some of these stone so I didn't buy any.  The other option that I had pictured was to fill it with purple glitter...or to make it cheaper purple sugar glitter like I made in my last post.  I still didn't like it.  I showed them and I took the glitter sugar to show them how it turned out.  Luckily they didn't like it either.

 

The Foundation also had some square vases so I thought I'd come up with a few ideas for those.  I found the gold coins so I thought I'd see how they looked.  Nope. The masks and street signs won't stand up well and there just isn't enough there.

 I thought I'd see what beads looked like.  Nothing says Mardi Gras like beads.  I looked what they would like with Mardi Gras beads and they didn't look too bad, but I thought with loose beads it would be easy to add demention and maybe a little cheaper.  Didn't like it as much.  One of the other options was to use the glitter sugar to fill it.  We decided on the last of my designs, and the supplies purchased would be used in other areas where we decided needed a little something extra.

 

This is floating candle bowl with a boa in it.  The masks don't stick up, so we decided to add some styrofoam to stick the dowels into.  There are a variety of boas so that not all of them are the same.  I did try it with the tinsel...

Again, didn't like it as much.  The tinsel would be cheaper, but we liked the boa more and had a big enough budget to go with the boas. The tinsel will be used to add a little Mardi Gras color to the bathrooms without focusing too much on the bathrooms.

 

 

To imagine these better, note that the tablecloths are black with gold taffeta overlay...well it is called champagne but looks like the gold that we were going for.  For the most part, these centerpieces can also be put together before the actual day of. We luckily had a room we could use to store the items in because the hurricane based centerpieces are difficult to store and transport.  Another thing to note, we used different sizes and shades of gold, purple, and green ornaments.  We had a tough time finding purple, so I spray painted them.  It is fairly easy to spray paint ornaments and most only needed one coat.  It was easy because I had a place to hang them up so I didn't have to do them one side at a time.

So, if you have any questions or want some help on developing your centerpiece ideas, just let me know! Can't wait until this weekend to see everything come together.  In my next post, I'll show my makeshift photos I used to help convey my thoughts on how the rest of the decorations would look, and watch for the actual event photos!!