PYL's first Guest Designer and her Mickey Mouse Centerpieces!!!

Hi Everyone!

I am sorry it has been a while since I put up a post.  The family is a little under the weather.  BUT, I am pleased to announce that PYL will now be having Guest Designers from time to time.  My first Guest Designer on the PYL FB group, and her Mickey & Minnie Mouse Centerpieces were a BIG hit.  So, I invited her to come onto PYL and share her creations.  I'm so glad to introduce Jennifer Snyder!  Here is her post:

Mickey and Minnie Mouse Centerpieces

I am honored to be Prettify Your Life’s first guest crafter!!! I appreciate you letting me share this with all of you!!!  First, let me introduce myself. My name is Jennifer Snyder. I am a wife to an amazing hubby, who lets me clutter our home with crafting items. :)  And I am a stay-at-home mom of a little boy who loves to keep me on my toes.  I also make wreaths and other crafts.  I started making wreaths thanks to Angela and her blog and now here I am.

So let me explain why I made these.  My son’s birthday party was this past Saturday, he LOVES ‘Mi Mouse.’ So that’s what my husband and I decided on for his 2^nd birthday.  To try to save some money I decided to try to make a lot of the decorations and food myself.  So, of course, I went to Pinterest.  I found a picture of a centerpiece.  After I looked at the picture and fell in love with it, I showed my husband and he said go for it.  It took me all of maybe 5 minutes to put it together (once everything was dry).  It was very easy to do!!!  Now the Minnie Mouse was an afterthought because I had trouble finding Red Hots.  Who knew those little cinnamon candies would be so hard to find?  So I lucked out when I found M&M’s in Valentine’s colors (pink, white, magenta, and red). So there was Minnie’s Polka dotted dress.  I posted the picture of the finished pieces onto the PYL Facebook group and Angela asked me if she could post the picture and a write up on PYL.

So here is what you will need:

3” Styrofoam balls- 4 of them for the ears
6” Styrofoam balls- 2 of them for the head
Wooden Dowels- 3; various sizes can be used. I used the small ones that you can find in Walmart in the crafting section
A lollipop stick
Ribbon- I used 5/8” on the top of the Mason jars and a 2 1/2” ribbon for Minnie’s bow
Fray Check
Mason Jars- 2; I used the larger ones found at Hobby Lobby
Black Acrylic paint
A foam paint brush
Hot glue and Hot Glue gun
White Buttons- Various sizes; whatever you would like on your jar
Candy- I used 4 bags of Valentine’s M&M’s but you can use Red Hots or anything small and red.

Ok so here it goes. Paint your Styrofoam balls with the black paint. Using the foam paint brush gets the best coverage. Yes you will get paint on your fingers, but hey that’s what being a crafter is all about!!! I placed them onto a piece of wax paper to dry. I then painted the wooden dowels black as well.

While those were drying, I started on the mason jars themselves. I glued the white buttons onto the front of the jar with hot glue.  I took the 5/8” ribbon and tied it around the top of the Mason jar. I did make a bow because to me a bow makes everything look better. I duck tailed the ends and used fray check on them to make sure the ribbon stayed intact. I then took the 2 1/2” ribbon and made a bow out of it and glued it onto the lollipop stick. You can use glue dots, but here is your pre-warning, I used them on mine and the bow fell off half way through the party. So I highly suggest hot gluing it to the lollipop stick.

Ok now here is the fun part. Take your small pieces of dowels and insert them halfway into the smaller Styrofoam balls, this makes the ears. Then insert them into the larger Styrofoam ball, the head, and tada you have a Mickey head. Once I inserted the smaller balls into the head I took them out and put my hot glue gun into the hole and added a small amount of glue into the hole, just to keep it in place. Then I took the two long wooden dowels and inserted them into the bottom of the head just enough to where I felt like they were in there pretty good. I did the same thing with the hot glue gun as before. Once the hot glue is dry I painted over it to hide my work. I then added the bow onto one of the heads that I had made. I did put it catty corner because I thought it looked fabulous that way!

Then I emptied all 4 bags of the Valentine’s M&Ms into a bowl and my mom and I sat and separated the red from the rest. My son even helped us even though we had to go behind him and fix some :) So after that was done I just placed the Mickey and Minnie heads into the jars!!! The M&Ms held the dowels in place very well!!

They turned out very cute and were a hit with everyone at the party. I hope you all enjoy and I hope it inspires you to make something special!!! Once again thank you Angela for letting me be the first guest crafter on Prettify Your Life!!!


Thanks Jennifer!  You did an amazing job!!!