Name tags for table decoration

Last year with my mother-in-law, we worked on making table decorations for her husband's big birthday party. 

Material needed: plastic decoration balls,  "glass" paint of the desired colour (I chose glittering and transparent for the background deco, and coloured for the names), a transparent sheet and various small beads and accessoires - I went for felt shamrocks and flowers or dried flowers (Baby's breath, Statice everlasting, straw flowers can do) and colourful feathers for women accompanied with pink and green beads, for the men: sea-shells and small blues stones (usually for vase decoration) and blue beads.

Now let's see how it went:

- First we layed out all the balls and painted the inside pattern. The balls were meant to have a back and front, the back was more decorated than the front so that the name would be emphasized.

- Then we waited for the paint to dry, it does not take very long and the paint became transparent which was the goal. The idea was to have glittering dots and waves.

- Afterwards came the filling part. We started with the bottom (back) half. 

 For the men: a small amount of blue stones, not too many, it has to remain quite light. On top mini sea-shells. We decided to vary the shells and the quantity so that not two decorations would be exactly the same.

For the women: we had four different patterns.

1) small fake colourful feathers

2) felt flowers (different sizes glued on top of each other)

3) felt shamrocks with a glue ladybird in the centre.

 

We had previously painted the names on the transparent sheet, drawing a circle ever-so slightly bigger than the back part of the ball to insure that the names would fit in it. We had to let dry before cutting and using them.

- Finally we filled the front half of the balls with the right beads, or with small dried flowers in the case of the balls decorated with the feathers.

 

- The last step was the trickiest: put the cut names on the back half, pour gently the beads on it so that it remains flat and finally close with the top part making sure that the name sheet is nicely blocked all around. We didn't even need to use one drop of glue to close the balls.

 Here is a close-up picture of the final result:

 

 It is not very complicated to make, depending on the quantity it might just be a bit long. To complete the whole thing we used raphia strings for people to be able to hang them once back at home (yes, the guests could leave with their own decorations).

There you are, I hope you will find this interesting and get some inspirations. I would love to see other similar realisations. I must say by the way, that my first inspiration was a friend of mine who gave me a decoration ball some years ago with a lovely fairy and some dried flowers. It is still hanging in my living-room!