Let the Mardi Gras season begin!

Well, not quite because the season doesn't officially begin until Twelfth Night, or Jan. 5.  Twelfth Night is the celebration of the end of the Christmas season (12 days of Christmas) & the eve of the Epiphany.  I'm getting a head start this year because I'm royalty this year & have lots to do before my Krewe's Grand Bal at the end of January.

I've started preparing the decorations for my Bal tables & am trying to do as much as possible ahead of time.  I want to enjoy getting ready on the day of the Bal, not spend the whole time preparing table decorations.  The first project was found on 100 Layer Cake (via Pinterest): Glittered Tea Light Holders!  I'm a sucker for anything that sparkles!

Photo via 100 Layer Cake

I ordered two dozen frosted tea light holders from Save On Crafts, a great site with inexpensive decorating supplies.  I decided to go with frosted because I'm using LED tea lights & they just aren't as pretty as the real thing.  I also enlisted the help of a friend, because all craft projects are better with friends!

We decided to do the top left design from Pinterest - glittering the rim of each holder.  We poured some Modge Podge into one bowl & some glitter into another.

Then we dunked each tea light holder into the bowl of glitter, pouring some more around the outside as needed to completely coat the modge podged rim with glitter.

And Voila!  Beautiful, sparkly tea light holders to scatter across my tables!  I'm sure that they'll be placed around the house after the Bal.  I can never have enough candles or sparkles!

Our second project was also via Pinterest, on Style Me Pretty: Metallic Animals!  Our Bal theme is Emerald City & you can't have that without some Animals!  I love the idea of some Animals to tuck into floral arrangements or leave on plates. Here's my inspiration:

Photo from Style Me Pretty

Keeping in tune with the gold & silver sparkly tea light holders, I decided to paint my animals gold & silver.  I bought a huge container of jungle animals on Amazon for super cheap ($30 for 60 animals) & got some spray paint in gold & silver metallic.  We started by laying all of the animals out on a trash bag.  Do this outside because of the fumes!

Then we sprayed half of them with the gold & half with the silver paint.  I did two coats, then flipped all of the animals over to get the other side.

And we ended up with some great looking Animals to tuck in wherever they look at home!  So much less expensive than finding & buying metal Animals!