How to display your creations

Last week was about Good Fortunes, and I hope you downloaded the complete exercise with its many message ideas to make it easy to do. But what the download doesn’t cover is how to display them. Here are a few ideas.

At left you see a bouquet of squiggles – some sort of dried plant molded into spirals and spray-painted gold which I found at Michael’s. The “vase” is the bottom of a round gift box, weighted down with glass marbles, both found at the Dollar Store. I also found some little clothespins decorated in gold at Michael’s with which to pin bright tulip and daffodil envelopes. I am particularly partial to these squiggles because they look good in a vase by themselves and they can be used throughout the year simply by changing what is attached to them – ornaments in December, shamrocks in March and so on.

Each of the envelopes (all made from A Dollar Store calendar) contains a decorated message, and as they leave, I ask my guests to choose an envelope and take home their Good Fortune. img_3007Because I am such a fanatic envelope maker, I can easily add more envelopes to the bouquet.

A second way to display these pretty envelopes is by sticking them randomly in a grape vine wreath. Again, the envelopes can change with the seasons, and chosen ones are easily replaced. You can also add other decorative touches – silk flowers as we did here, or Mardi Gras beads, or trinkets, for example. During December holidays you may want to use an evergreen wreath.

img_2992Probably the simplest way to offer these Good Fortune messages is to put the envelopes in a small basket and let people choose any one that strikes their fancy. I also like to skip the envelopes and print out the messages on a sheet of cheerfully-colored paper. Then cut the paper in strips, roll them up, and secure these scrolls with decorative paper as shown here as a Valentineimg_2990 possibility. The scrolls can be placed randomly into a shallow basket as we suggested with the envelopes, or put in a round container as shown here. Note that we used the top of the gift box from the Dollar Store, the bottom of which was used above for a vase.

While this idea works well in your home, it is also a lovely way to brighten the day of residents and families in long-term care setting, visitors to a doctor’s office, or customers in hair salons, mail service centers, and many more locations.

Check out “Creating Delight” on Pinterest for many more examples of envelope art and the messages inside.