The Crafty Ballet Mom, Part 2

Way back in February I shared a post with you entitled The Crafty Ballet Mom.   Truth be told, it’s probably one of my funniest posts, or at least to me it was.   If you didn’t read it, pop over and do so now, and see how I made these lovely faux cotton candy props.

Here we are in spring recital mode.  The ballet instructor once again asked me to use my creativity to work on props.  She apparently has more confidence in my ability than I do. 

Anyway, she shoved a lovely little tangerine colored tutu into my hands and asked for fourteen tiny bouquets for the fourteen tiny dancers to hold during their dance.   The class is a young group, and without something in their hands they tend to flop their little arms around like little baby birds trying to learn how to fly.

I took the little tangerine tutu (which I should have photographed but didn’t) and headed to the craft store.   I  came home with this wonderful pile of crafty goodness.

The little roses are just a tiny shade lighter than the tutu, and the little greenish/white accent flowers are the exact shade as the edging on the tutu skirt.   Luckily there were 8 roses per bunch, so I only had to buy two bunches (and they were on sale, score!).

I used the husbands wire cutters to separate the roses and accent flowers into nice, neat little piles.

Next I paired up the roses with the accent flowers, to make sure I had enough of each.  This is an important step so you don’t get to the end and realize you’re out of accent flowers.  I learned how important this was in my original The Crafty Ballet Mom.

I did see that a couple of the bouquets were going to need some more accent flowers.   I made another trip to the craft store and bought one more group of accent flowers, and I also bought some white glitter tulle.  This is where things got ugly, and painful.

The goal with the tulle was to add some fullness and sparkle to the bouquets.  What I didn’t realize is that the glitter off of the tulle would fall every so gently off of the tulle and onto the surrounding area…skin, clothes, the floor, it all had sparkles.  For days to come sparkles could be found in various places, some of which I’m quite sure God never intended to have sparkles, ahem.

Other than the sparkle issue, things were going relatively smoothly up until this point of the process.  I had wrapped the stems tightly together with floral tape, and added a few strips of the glitter tulle into the little bouquets.  Lovely, no?

In a moment of reckless abandon, my crafty mojo suddenly turned on me.   “Wrap the flower stems in sparkly tulle”, it said.  “In fact, hot glue the tulle on so that the little ballerinas don’t pull it loose”, cried the crafty mojo.   Why?  Why do I listen to these ideas?

Here you see the victim, placing the flower stem onto the folded sparkly tulle, the hot glue gun at the ready.

Searing, scorching pain shot through my fingers as hot glue and sparkly tulle became one blazing glob of crafty nightmare.   Sweet mother of all that is good, why?! Why did I listen to my crafty mojo?

Too far into the project to give up I pushed on, wrapping, gluing, uttering things like “good hooglie mooglie” in elevated tones.  With an occasional '”gaaaaaaaahhhhhh”  thrown in.  The children precariously peeked around the corner “Mom, you ok?”

Um, no, I’m not ok.  I’m burnt, and I’m stubborn and I will not give in.  It finally dawned on me (oh, say 7 or 8 bouquets later, because I’m quick like that) that if I didn’t pick the cooled dried glob of glue/tulle off between each bouquet, it would in fact not burn at all.  Ha! 

Sixteen little bouquets later (yes I made two extra, just in case), my task was complete.  Long live the conquering Crafty Ballet Mom!!

Stupid crafty mojo.

The Crafty Ballet Mom

There are several things I never expected to be called in my life.  One was mom, one was crafty and another was anything to do with ballet.   Yet, today this crafty ballet mom spent the day making props for the upcoming Performance Awards.   Funny, no?

My first project was to make flower holders for the “Flower Dance”.  This one was pretty simple.  I found some lovely little metal flower pots at the Dollar Tree, and some silk flowers.  The biggest issue was how to keep the flowers standing upright so the dancers could easily “pick” the flowers during their performance.  I’d planned on buying little plastic bottles, but in a moment of genius, I asked the pharmacist at Wal-Mart if I could have 8 little empty pill bottles for a project and he said yes.  Score!  (Although he did ask “and do you need LIDS?” as if he thought I may have had ulterior motives.)

I hot glued the pill bottles into the bottoms of the buckets, then hot glued fake grass around the edges to cover the orange bottles.  (I know I need more grass, but we are currently snowed in and a trip back to the Dollar Tree is on hold.)  Then I cut the stems of the flowers and wrapped them by two’s with floral tape, and tada!

The second project was for the “Cotton Candy Dance”.   So I came up with this stash of crafty goodness.

For future reference, Kool-Aid will NOT color polyester fiber fill.  However, liquid food coloring will.  You never know when you might need that bit of information, so store it in some deep corner of your mind, okay?

In order to color the polyester fiber fill, place a few drops of food coloring in a plastic zip lock bag, then shove some fiber fill in and begin wallowing it all around the bag.   You may need to add more food coloring as you go, but do NOT put it directly on the fiber fill unless you want it to look like it has chicken pox (ask me how I know).

Anyway, once you have your fiber fill the correct shade (or as close as you can get), then set it out to dry a few minutes.  Now this is where things get sticky, for real.   Lay a long bead of hot glue down the side of one of the paper cones (totally random thing I found at a clearance type store, I knew they’d come in handy one day!)  If you don’t have the “official” one’s you use for cotton candy, then roll up a piece of heavy paper and tape/glue it together.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the glue.   Now the hot glue instantly adheres to your poly fill, which instantly adheres to your hands.  Which burns and makes you scream things like “good hooglie mooglie” (or worse).   Consider yourself warned.

Now that you’ve got some of the poly fill glued to the cone, you just need to work it around, and around repeating the hot glue, burn, good hooglie mooglie steps as necessary.

Once you’ve blistered your hands, I mean finished gluing it all, then take it outside into a WELL ventilated, not windy place and spray it heavily with clear acrylic sealer.   Which by the way is highly flammable, an eye irritant and is harmful to breathe…but hey it works and gives you a nice little buzz.

In the event that you think that this would be a good time to squeeze your creation together to make it more firm, DON’T, because your hands will instantly stick to the colored, smelly polyester fiber fill and you’ll have to ask your child for help in dislodging it.  Don’t even ask.

When it’s all said and done, you’ll have some lovely fake cotton candy for some little ballerina to shred while waiting to go on stage.

You may also have hands that look like this.

I’m sure the stains will wash off by the time the blisters heal.

The Nutcracker

This is the first ballet I’ve ever attended.   Saturday night we watched the show, Sunday afternoon I worked backstage.   Let me tell you, backstage is HARD work!  

The production was WONDERFUL!  I’ve been told that it rivals professional shows.     The guest artist was Jurijs Safonovs. He is such a wonderful dancer, and so pleasant to work with. 

Olivia had a wonderful time in her first year of  The Nutcracker.  It was so much fun watching her excitement build.  But what I loved was her level of confidence.

Here are a few photos from backstage today. Aren’t they adorable?  Olivia’s solute in the last photo was impromptu on her part, and way cute.

 

My daughter, the clown:

 

Lindsey is now super excited about next year.  She has grand plans for being a Gingersnap….but I think she’s going to miss the age cut off for auditions.  Olivia is already planning out the next few years worth of roles as well.

Aren’t they a lovely couple?

Oh To Be a Ballerina!

Olivia has always been one of those “trip over thin air” kind of kids.  In part, I think a lot of it has been that she grows so fast that she just has a hard time keeping up with her own self.  Part of it is, well she’s a kid, and kids do fall a lot.  Then there is the point that, well the child is just plain clumsy!

When she was four I decided to sign her up for ballet classes.  My logic was that she would at least be more aware of her body and her surroundings.  So for the first two years of ballet, she basically learned to fall a lot prettier! 

Then somewhere in the middle of this, her third year, something happened.  Suddenly, she was actually dancing and not just tripping to the music!  Her movements became more graceful and purposeful.

In March she competed in her first performance awards, and I was in tears as I watched her perform.  She earned a silver medal with distinction honors and I couldn’t have been prouder.

This past weekend was the Spring Ballet Recital.  The theme was “Under the Sea”. Olivia was to be a Sea Princess, and Lindsey was a Rainbow Fish.  Lindsey’s class performed with 2 other classes, each class in a different color.  She was just plain cute.

I was dumbstruck when Olivia’s class danced on stage.  Somehow, my clumsy, easily distracted child had transformed into an extremely focused dancer.  She carried herself with a confidence I’d never noticed before. Not once did she look to the other dancers to see what they were, or were not doing.  She looked straight ahead, smiling and dancing beautifully.