Friday 13 December 2013

DIY Bauble Place Card Holder

   CHRISTMAS!!
   *ahem*
   Yes, Christmas. It's almost here! I've been so busy with sales lately that I've not really had the chance to think about Christmas crafts and DIY for the blog, but I've tried to take the time out lately to give it some thought. So far I have two. It's not much, but it's something, right?

   My family don't have big gatherings at Christmas, and we don't really sit around the table. My family is quite distant from eachother, and with my mum's condition it's not easy for us to just sit around a table, so we tend to eat at two tables in the livingroom. I'd love to have a dinner around a table with place cards and all that, but I am also very aware of how socially awkward I am, and that whenever I eat around a table with anyone else - friends, family, Seeg's family and so on - I am so insanely uncomfortable that I can't really enjoy it.
   But that doesn't mean I can't plan ahead for the future, so I started playing around with place cards. When I was younger I used to make place cards for dinner eventhough we all sat in the same places (back then we were around a table and my mum wasn't in a wheelchair) as we did every other day for dinner, but I felt that it was a part of the whole experience. I still sort of believe that.
   I used to make place card holders out of old baubles, too, I used to glue the name cards to the tops of them, and they'd face straight up. Having grown up a little I found a better way to use baubles for place card holders without glueing anything to them - in fact they remain as fully functional baubles after dinner.


You Will Need:
Baubles
Rubber O rings (craft stores, DIY stores and alternative jewellery stores)
Split ring


   Take your bauble and a split ring. Open the split ring so that you can have the ring of the bauble, or the part that string would be threaded through, between the two sides of the split ring as shown. This will act as the actual card holder.


   Take the O ring and place the bauble on top of it. I was using about 5-6cm baubles and a 10mm O ring. I could have done with one a bit larger really, about 15-20mm, but it's all good in the end. The O ring willl stop the bauble from rolling away into someone else's seat. Three people can't sit on one seat.

   If you bought the baubles specifically for this purpose and want to reuse them as place holders again, you could always put a layer of Mod Podge or PVA glue - something that dries clear - over the top of the O ring and place the bauble on top, and they'll be fixed together once it's dry.

   This is a great way to reuse old baubles that have been replaced by newer ones over the years - I can't help buying new decorations each year, so each year, the decorations I bought in the past get put away or hung up elsewhere. This is a good way to reuse them.


   Be aware: use plastic or shatterproof baubles if you're not going to glue it to the O ring (the bigger the bauble, the bigger the O ring), because it can still roll off of the O ring and subsequently smash.



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