Grad Party Part 1 - Decor

For those of you that don't know, my mom (who has been going to school and getting degrees for almost as long as I can remember) recently graduated with a Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling. A MASTERS DEGREE! Pretty awesome. And oh yeah, did I mention that she graduated with Distinction? Yeah, my mom is kind of a badass.

She had orignally planned to take a vacation after graduating and before starting down her new career path, but as we all know, life gets in the way sometimes and she had to adjust her plans. She mentioned off-hand that she was thinking about having a graduation party and I told her that it wasn't even worth questioning, that she could definitely do it, and despite the 730 miles between us, that I could plan it. After a very short-lived idea for a luau/tropical theme, my mom decided that she wanted her party to have a literary theme with psychology references if possible.

I introduced her to Pinterest, and then I didn't hear from her for a week. Ha! Only joking. (But seriously, Pinterest is the great time suck to end them all!). I started a Grad Party board that we could both pin to and after a few weeks of looking at inspiration photos, I dove into crafting. In this entry, I will show you the process for some of these crafts, and some sneak peak photos. I will also post a similar entry about food and drinks. The third entry in this series will be about the party itself and show pictures of how everything came together. Now keep in mind that while I did gather some inspiration photos, they were to be used for just that - inspiration. So don't expect exact replicas here because that's not what I was going for. So with that, let's get started, shall we?

A couple of months ago I saw some cute floral print plates and napkins at Party City and ended up using them as the base of my inspiration. I thought they were really cute and tea party-esque and decided to pull colors from them for the rest of the decor.

After that, it was time to craft. First up: Tissue paper flowers.

I have seen these tissue paper and/or coffe filter flowers all over the place but never really had any reason to try making them myself until now. I used tissue paper so that I didn't have to bother dying coffee filters, but you could use either. Everyone will have their own method, I'm sure, but here was mine:

Lay out a stack of 8 sheets of tissue paper.
Trace a large scalloped pattern on the paper as many times as you can. (I try to throw away as little paper as possible)
Place a staple or brad in the middle of each flower.
Cut around the template into more manageable squares.
Trim the edges.
Starting with the top layer of paper, pinch up and crumple into a little ball so the other layers will have something to form around.
Bring each layer up individually until all layers are crinkled.
"Twist" the finished product in your hands, carefully, not ripping the papers.
Open up the layers some, and "fluff".

Getting started... Popcorn for breakfast and Sorcerer's Stone keeping me company.

A whole bag full of paper edges. Oops.

I also considered making teal and lilac flowers, but didn't want the colors to get muddled, so I just stuck with white, pink, and yellow.

I made a TON of these flowers. Probably like 60. I used some of them just scattered around the room and tables, and then others were used in bouquets with the next project - flowers I made from book pages.

Aren't those adorable? I used them as the jumping off point for my page flowers. I used some old packing paper I had, some book pages, and some little tweed flowers for the middle. It hurt my heart a little bit destroying a book.... but it wasn't a good book, so I was able to forgive myself.

The Process:
Borrow an array of paper punches from your ever-crafting mother-in-law.
Rip up a book. Cry a little. Drink some wine if that's your thing.
Punch out whatever papers you are using. I made large book circles, medium plain circles, small page flowers, and some little leaves.
Put the flowers together - I used these little green sticks with small copper wire that I got from the floral department at Hobby Lobby. You could use pipe cleaners or wire or any other number of things - this is just what I had on hand from a previous project so I made it work.
Hot glue mini tweed flower to the middle of each flower.
Reinforce at the base of each flower where it connects to the stick/wire/whatever with a dab of hot glue.
Place upright (I used mason jars) to dry completely.

Oof. :(

Finished flowers.

After I was finished making all of the flowers, I attached some of the tissue paper flowers to the sticks as well, and then I bunched some together to make bouquets. Each bouquet was made up of 4 flowers - 2 white, one book page,  and either 1 yellow or one pink flower. I just squished them together and bound the "stems" with a tiny rubber band.

As you may have noticed, the bouquets were then placed in some little mason jars. I figured those would go well with the whole kind of high tea/garden party theme we had going on.

Process:
Gather leftover pages - measure to cut to fit around the jars.
Make a couple more page flowers to place on the jars. Add leaves. (I used hot glue.)
Tie a cute ribbon or twine around the top of the jar. Voila!

Originally, my mom pinned those sparkly faery light mason jars to our board - let me just say this - that pin is totally bogus. I thought it looked too good to be true so I tried it with one and it was a disaster. SO not worth it, seriously, stay away. So instead I used my mason jars for vases, a la the second inspiration photo, and we put some uncovered mason jars with tealights in them on the outside tables next to a vase of paper flowers. Below are my inspiration photos, and some of my decorated mason jars.

I also made a penant banner to hang in the room - it was just a plan brown banner and I used different fancy papers to cut out the words "Hooray Grad!" - the completed photos will be in the entry with all the finished products, for now, here's a sneak peek:

Mom also pinned a picture of this sign that points out the paths to different fictional places. If we were having an outdoor party, I might have tackled actually making the sign, but since it was a party in a room, I instead just blew up and printed the photo, matted it on some floral printed paper, and put it in a pretty brushed brass frame.

My absolute favorite thing that I made though, was this paper "curtain" - I didn't know where I was going to put it or how it was going to fit into the decor, but I saw a photo on Pinterest that I LOVED and wanted to make my own version of it.

I used the paper punches again with some pretty cardstock and the scraps from my pages.

Process:
Use a ruler to mark off a small rod (I used a 3 foot rod) so that you can evenly space your hangings.
Measure out several lengths of string/fishing line/ribbon/twine. I just used white string. (Oh, and my "measuring) was having my husband hold his arm up in the air and cutting string from there to the floor - ha!
Tie your string to your dowel/rod where you marked it off. Add a small dot of glue to reinforce.
Lay dowel on floor and stretch out the strings.
Punch or cut out all of your circles/shapes and staack so they are ready to go.
If you have a focal point (mine were the book page flowers), place those next to the string so you know where you want to put them before attaching them. Place a small dab of hot glue on one piece of paper. Put it under the string, and place a secon piece on top of the string. Hold for a few seconds to firm up.
Repeat with all main pieces.
Use the same process for the smaller/colorful pieces.
Add small decorations to the rod to cover where you tied off the string. (I used the small tweed flowers from earlier, and a couple of the large pink paper flowers for the ends.)

I loved this - I just thought it was so cute! It took forever though - but it was worth it!

And lastly, *deep breath* a few inspiration photos that aren't exactly crafting, but I don't want to show the photos for from our party until the wrapup post.

Stay tuned for the next post - food!

For food, see Part 2 HERE.
For the full party recap, see Part 3 HERE.