For the annual father daughter dances, there is a decoration contest. We haven't won yet, but we have fun putting the decoration together.
Ties and Tiaras Dance Decoration
Our age group needed to create a tiara decoration. I came up with this particular tiara design and for safety reasons I cut with an electric carving knife (the ones used for turkey) myself, but ALL the girls in the troop and some of the moms painted and decorated it. The decoration is made from 4' x 8' foam board purchased at Home Depot. Its incredibly lightweight, but incredibly difficult to drive home on the roof of your car! We used a double layer so that we could lay battery powered Christmas lights between them to create even more shimmer to it. The second picture shows the finished product just before it was hung up at the dance. I used a Sharpie to draw the design.
To create a 3 dimensional effect, I wedged a few pieces of foam near the edges of the tiara. It gave just enough space without causing any damage to the delicate silver tiara cutout. The flowers of the tiara also had the center pushed out a bit to create another 3 dimensional effect. The Christmas lights were just laying between the two layers of 4' x 8' foam board. We used pink duct tape along the outside edge to keep them secured together.
The back 4' x 8' sheet has white glitter (yes, glitter again) on it that shined quite nicely once the Christmas lights were on.
Mardi Gras Dance Decoration
WARNING - BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL when using an electric knife. NEVER let the girls use it. I ended up in the emergency room as I was trying to cut out the Mardi Gras mask, needing several stitches to my left hand and now have limited sensation in one of my fingers. I've used this knife several times for projects before and never had an issue. It was a complete accident, luckily the knife was off. I was trying to push the knife through just to create a hole to start cutting out one of the eyes and it got stuck. When I pushed it through with a little extra oomph, I caught my hand on the other side.
I used Christmas ornaments I found on clearance to create a 3 dimensional effect. In this photo, one is temporarily in place.
The girls were still Daisies at the time of this dance, so I wanted to incorporate something that symbolized being a daisy. I ended up making a daisy and placing at the top of the mask. It was secured with glue, extra long tooth picks, and bamboo skewers.
By the contest rules, we were bound to create a mask, but I originally thought of having beads instead. I found purple and green bouncy balls ($1) from Walmart. In the end, I only used the purple balls.
The dance was held in April, quite a bit after Mardi Gras usually occurs so I was able to find lots of Mardi Gras colored yarn on clearance. I used this to secure the balls into a necklace.
We decorated the mask with purple cellophane, GLITTER, sequin trim, and Christmas balls we dipped in yes, MORE GLITTER. I really thought the girls would want to decorate each of the daisy petals in the official Girl Scout Daisy colors, but they wanted to keep it all purple and gold. In the end, it looked fantastic.
