Women Who Create and a Lolly Tutorial

Last Thursday we had our Relief Society Birthday Dinner.  The theme was "Women Who Create" inspired by the talk Happiness, Your Heritage by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf ( of the LDS Church).  We had a fabulous dinner-chicken and wonton salad with ricin the gym and then moved to the RS room for 3 speakers based on President Uchtdorf's talk and then back to the gym for icecream sundaes with chocolate dipped fortune cookies.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the yummy food-I forgot my camera for the actual night- but Lindsay and Mandy did a awesome job!  I was in charge of decorations which I love and always make too big of a deal out of, but thats what makes things special right?

If you've ever decorated an LDS gym you know it can be a challenge.  They are quite large and you just can't get around the basketball hoops.  We kept to one side of the gym and used the rolling chalkboards to cut it off.  (Same idea as from the valentines dance)  I hung these tissue pompoms from the basketball hoop at varying heights.  These are my fave or decorating since they are so cheap and easy.  

I made some garlands from doilies and ribbon, just fold the doily in half and staple over some ribbon (I used gift wrapping ribbon spools).  I saw this at a  boutique in Utah and fell in love.

I also did some coffee filter garlands.  I love how fun and inexpensive these are.  Right now these are hanging in Ivy's room!

Originally we were going to have our dinner in the multi-purpose room so I was going to hang garland for the ceiling and have small centerpieces.  Then we realized almost 70 people would be coming (We sent out an Evite) and moved it to the gym.  So I needed a bigger centerpiece.  Don't you love when you get an excuse to make something?!  I had been eying these lollies on the House of 3 blog and now had the perfect reason to make some, or 30.  So now here's your tutorial!  (Sorry there are a lot of pictures but I'm kind of visual that way and something gives me the feeling you are too!)

Supplies
~ an old book you don't mind ripping up
(I got mine from Goodwill for 70 cents.  I think the pages are about 7 1/2 by 5?)
~six inch doilies
~embellishment (I'm using feathers and scraps of paper)
~hot glue
~ a circle punch or something circular to trace
~dowels
~ribbon

First up fold your pages accordian style (you need 3 pages per lolly)

Then fold that in half

Do this for all three pages

You are going to put a strip of glue on one side and then pinch it together so it stays in a fan shape,

like this!  Again do this for all three pages.

Pinch the fan together and put a line of hot glue on one edge.  Glue it to another fan, and another,

 so all three are glued together like that.  Put glue on one outside edge and open up your fans so you can

glue it together like this.  I hope this is making sense so far.   Cuz that was the time consuming part especially if you make 30 of them! (Thanks Celia for doing half)

Now put some glue on the center of your doily and center you book pages on it.

For my embellishment I used some feather trim.  This is where you can get all kinds of creative, but here's mine.  I glued on some feathers,

then I traced some circles ( maybe an 1 1/2 inches?) cut them out and distressed the edges.

And you guessed it I hot glued it onto the feathers.  Ta Da!

I used 3 different papers and put three in each vase.

Sugar is a great vase filler cuz it is so cheap and if your vases are clean you get to just put it in your pantry instead of taking up precious space in your craft room.  I tied on some pink ribbon to the dowels.  You could paint them but I didn't want to ran out of time.

Oh and those lollies just slide on to the dowel behind a fold so you can switch them out and store them easily! 
Tomorrow I'll share the best part of our evening and how we celebrated the women in our ward.
  (since this was way long!)
I'll also try to get the Wonton Salad recipe since it was SO yummy.

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