Glittery New Years

If you read my post from last New Year's you may know that my favorite inclusion in the midnight party is glitter!  But glitter can be dangerous to your home and loved ones, i.e. it gets everywhere and is impossible to get rid of.  Well for cleanliness' sake, I am happy to have discovered the keys to keeping glitter in its place with my latest DIY projects and can share these easy crafts with you.

Ok, so I admittedly used a few of the same party supplies from last year, an effort to go green though right?  As a quick reminder, I embellished plain dollar store party hats by painting with Mod Podge and then sprinkled colored glitter over the entire hat.  I allowed to dry and then applied another coat of Modge Podge over the top and again sprinkled with glitter.  I repeated these steps until there were no more spots showing through of the original hat color.  You can add decorative fringe to the bottom and metallic bow to the top using hot glue and voila!

Unlike last New Year when our family of 5 spent a quiet evening at home, this year we were invited to spend the evening/early morning hours with a large group including other adults (yay!) at their house.  I knew that adults were going to be (responsibly) drinking bubbly and would need a way to keep track of whose drink was whose.  What this means to me.......an opportunity for glitter!  I bought cheap champagne glasses and gathered 8 colors of glitter from my crafting supplies.  I used a foam paint brush to cover the base of each flute with Mod Podge.  I placed the glass on a disposable plate and sprinkled glitter over the Mod Podge and allowed to dry.  Once dry, I shook the excess glitter off onto the plate and gave the glass another coat of Mod Podge and glitter.  After a few coats and after the glasses dried all the way I brought them outside to my patio.  I covered the top of the glasses with ziplock bags and sprayed each glass' base with Rust-oleum Crystal Clear Enamel.  This step is key in not only ensuring that minimal glitter comes off of the glasses while being handled, but you can also successfully now hand wash these champagne flutes to use again and again.

As a proper guest, I brought an appropriate gift for the hostess, a gold-glittered bottle of champagne.  This looked spectacular next to the glasses on a tray that I covered with metallic silver wrapping paper.  For the base I chose an economical bottle of Brut with a gold top wrapper.  I again used a foam paintbrush to cover the bottle with Mod Podge.  I used two sizes of gold glitter for this project with the larger gold flecks for the top half of the bottle to represent bubbles rising in the champagne.  To completely cover the bottle took a great amount of glitter and don't forget to finish off with a final coat of Mod Podge over the top of the glitter to avoid sprinkling your hostess' home.

One more touch of glitter and a yummy dessert.  Plus, I try to use these cute push up pop containers whenever I get the chance.  I covered the box with the metallic gift wrap and poked holes in the top of the box for the sticks.  I used a Jello Jigglers recipe to make two types of jello.  Once the jello hardened, I used the push up pop containers as cookie cutters to make jello circles then I layered each container with a circle of orange jello, then whip cream, then a layer of purple jello.  I wrapped each push up pop with a gold-glittered ribbon and displayed in the silver box for guests to grab.

A very Happy New Year to all of my readers!  To a wonderful and creative 2014!