Happy Sunday :) I figured I'd bring you more from the Vampire Diaries Chicago convention today - starting with the centerpiece I made for the contest at the Decade Dance! (I'll also have another post about a panel later...but who? hehe) I was having trouble trying to decide what to pick for my centerpiece entry when I ran across an image online for a punch bowl that had fake blood dripping off the rim, It was like for a Halloween party or something. That is where my idea was born!

So I talked my husband into going to Hobby Lobby one Saturday to look for the punch bowl and the "ice" - which I had decided was going to be those little decorative colored, clear beads that people put in the bottom of vases. I wandered around Hobby Lobby after picking up a few small glass vials (for blood storage)...and found the mother of all glass containers to use for my centerpiece - a martini glass!  don't think I could have found anything better! It's super heavy and very well made haha My biggest challenge was trying to find a way to make the glass look like it was dripping blood. I needed a way that wouldn't be too gross, but still looked real. Ok, so here is the tools I used to create my centerpiece...


For the vials and pots of blood, I just put food coloring in water. Super simple on that part! I ended up going with a mixture of honey and red food coloring for the dripping blood. It took a little to get a good consistency...


I mixed it together so that it wasn't too watery and then used a spoon to drizzle the mixture over the rum of the glass...


I could only do sections at a time because if you tried to do too much at a time the honey didn't drain down the sides. Every once in a while I had to tilt the glass and roll it around to make the honey drip more or less, depending on what it looked like. Once it was all covered, all the way around, I had to let it sit overnight...


IT WAS MESSY! Very messy. And sticky. I was in fear walking from our room down to the room where they were holding the dance. I imagined myself smashing the glass back into my dress and effectively ruining it with the honey concoction. I was lucky, and that didn't happen! I knew I couldn't travel with this. It would stain everything and just make everything sticky! So I cleaned it off and redid the dripping blood in my hotel room the night we got to Chicago :)

And what am I going to do with this giant martini glass now? Eventually, I'm going to get my makeup/polish desk set up across the living room, and I'm going to use it to hold my brushes! haha I'm not going to have blood dripping off the rim or anything, but I'm going to put the beads down and use them for my brushes to stand up in. Cool idea, huh? :)