Top hats and bow ties. Boas and jewels. It is time to deck the halls of the school for teacher appreciation week. This year I found a Melissa and Doug child's photo frame sketch pad that prompted the theme. The pad was only $4.99 at Ross.
Thanks to Kinkos Fed Ex I was able to print the headshots from the school photos for only around $4.00. I requested 8X10 to make them all a standard size. I then had to trim some of them to fit in the Melissa and Doug paper frame opening. I just used a glue stick to glue the picture down.
The jewelry that adorned the photos is made out of old broken or out of style jewelry that I had kept for a project such as this. I got a mixed bag of feathers from Hobby Lobby. The adornments were all hot glued on. And out of 25 photos, I only had to hot glue 1 earring on that fell off when we were hanging the photos. They are fairly light weight, so I just used duct tape to stick them to the wall.
The men received top hats and bow ties. I used black paper, drew a top hat, and cut it out by hand. The bow ties were bows from the scrapbooking section at Hobby Lobby. The fuzzy mustaches were full size ones that come in a pack from Dollar Tree. I cut them down with scissors to fit the photo face. They came out looking so dapper!!
The napkins became bowties. I got this clever idea from Pinterest. I adapted it a bit, by adding a fork in the back to make a napkin fork bundle. I fan folded the napkins and binded them up with grosgrain ribbon that I just hot glued together.
I created a chandelier to "hang" above the table from an outdoor chandelier that was only $17.99 from Ross! I strung crystals taken from my Christmas ornaments on to it with black wire from Hobby Lobby. The chandelier was hung off of a vintage bird stand arm. If I had not had that, I would have used a plant spike arm set in concrete. It you don't want the trouble of using a real chandelier, Party City had a fun paper one online.
The acrylic plates, vases, and cake stands were made from Dollar Tree plates, wine glasses, and bowls, that I hot glued together. They handled the weight of muffins, snacks, and candy through out the week of meals. The plates, bow tie napkins, and regular napkins were stored in a 3 tier metal basket that I had in the basement. It was already the same black color of the chandelier, so I just added a few ornaments to tie it in together. The faux roses were 3 bunches of roses that I got for 3.40 a bunch on clearance at Hobby Lobby, and stuck in a Dollar Tree acrylic vase.
I had the table cloth from my vintage linens collection. The table runner is just an inexpensive damask runner I had from someone's old wedding decor. Sometimes it pays to hoard left over decor in the basement! The silver charger plates were from my old Christmas decor, and I will use them again as chargers.
The fun paper decor that I hung from the drop ceiling is just a pack of assorted decor from the party section at Hobby Lobby. The top hats are from Party City. I just bought the least expensive ones I could get.
All together this theme party decor was under $100 total!!