Father/Daughter Dance - Vintage Circus Theme Part 1

Hello There!

  For the past 7 years, I've been helping with the Father/Daughter Dance at my daughter's school. We've got a great group of women who come together and really put their heart and soul into the event. We get no real funding from the school but these women are incredibly giving of their time, creativity and money. I've truly come to respect and love each one of them for all their many talents and their ability to give freely. They are an amazing group and I'm so very lucky to have met them!

  My main responsibility has been the decorations for the hall. There's nothing fancy about this hall. It's a pretty sterile industrial looking hall, in my opinion. We try really hard to make it look as magical as we can the night of the dance. This year's theme was Vintage Circus with deep reds, blacks, golds, and black and white harlequin pattern as the main color pallet.

 Our breeze way (area between the church and the hall) was just renovated and we wanted to showcase this area. I kept staring at this brand new adjacent area (which is just off of the renovated breeze way) trying to figure out how to dress it up. 

When I saw the fencing, it reminded me of the bars seen in a circus wagon. So, I dressed them up to look like circus wagons and had this be the entrance for the dads/daughters to come through. At the check-in table (located at the top of this walkway), I also had a small speaker system playing circus music off my iPhone to set the proper mood. The dance was in February and we were fearful of some showers. Because this fencing was inside of the roof line, I was hopeful that any decorations would not get ruined by some rain. We actually did have a very quick 15 min downpour and the decorations did get slightly wet due to the rain being pushed by the wind but it all worked out.  Here's what it looked like once it was all decorated.

All the yellow stars were cut on my Cricut.

 

 The giraffe was my favorite animal in the circus wagon train!

The CIRCUS font is called Carousel and I used it heavily in a lot of the decorations.  The cage background is just black butcher paper the school had which meant it was not cost to me! (Love that!). Some of the fencing sections were the same size. I laid out two rows of black butcher paper plus 12".  The top row over lapped the bottom row by 3" or so and then used dollar store clear packing tape to adhere them. The circus animals were adhered to the butcher paper with spray adhesive. Several years ago, we learned that you can't go cheap on the spray adhesive that can be found at the dollar store for these large prints. We've had great adhesion with products like 3M or Scotch brands. We also try to use the spray adhesive the night before (or earlier) and allow them to thoroughly dry before we hang them. The day of the dance, we wrapped the butcher paper around the outside bar and taped it back onto itself in the back. We were also very careful to NOT tape anything to the new fence. We taped the top of the black butcher paper to the back of the red wagon tops. This kept it from flying or buckling in the wind. The animals were printed by a mom who's got a connection to someone who works at a print shop. For the last several years, she donates the images for us in exchange for service hours. It's a win/win!

I used my Cricut to cut the tops of the wagon. I used the Larger than Mat technique to cut the tops of the wagon. I loaded up my 12x24 Cricut mat with two 12x12 sheets of red paper and ensured they touched in the center to cut my wagon tops. I then cut out a large cardboard rectangle the width of the fence and then glued the wagon top to the cardboard to ensure stability. I also punched holes in the cardboard and ran thin floral wire through the holes which made attaching the wagon tops the day of the even super fast, easy and no tape required.

The yellow wheels were also made on my cricut using 12x12 paper.I cut a long piece of cardboard and wrapped it in red butcher paper (free from the school!) and then glued the wheels on at the right height so that they just kissed the top of the brick. Bent wagon wheels were not allowed! I also punched holes and attached floral wire to attach them to the fencing. Sorry, I should of taken a picture of the back to get a better idea of the wiring.

Check In Table:

That was our check-in table. Aren't those centerpieces great?? We have a mom who has been churning these out for us for the last couple of years. We worked on the prototype but she runs with the rest of it and does EXCELLENT work!

The elephant, giraffe, motorcycle riding bear and the harlequin paper were found here: Mark Montano  We sent the images to a print shop to ensure vivid images. I also had the mirror image printed so that the front and backs looked exactly the same. I made some "glitter sticks" which are just bambo skewers from the dollar store that are painted with white glue and then sprinkled with glitter. The glitter sticks were sandwich in between the mirror images and then poked/glued into the harlequin base. The little harlequin bases are made out of floral foam from the dollar store and wrapped in the harlequin paper. If I remember correctly, I think we got 6 harlequin bases out of each pack of dollar store floral foam. The red tubs are also from the dollar store and were picked up around Christmas time. We actually didn't get enough at Christmas time. Ugh!! We ended up buying pink ones (Valentines decor) and just spray painted the outer rim red since the tops were covered in black glitter adhesive paper which was purchased at efavormart for 7 bucks and some change for a pack of 10. (These sheets were bigger than the ones Michael's has and sells for $1.29/sheet in my area.) The gold stars were cut on my Cricut with glitter foam and hot glued to the red tubes.

The new updated breeze way required some decorating too.

BEFORE:

 The circus sign was one of the printed images that we spray adhered to a large piece of cardboard. On the columns, I wrapped some wire around the top and bottom - think a string of wire  wrapped around the pillar and twisted at the ends with pliers to form a ring of wire. I tucked the red and gold tulle over the wire at the top and base.

AFTER:

We had round tables in the hall and a few rectangle tables in the breeze way. We had both black or red tables clothes as the base and then had gold glitter runners which anchored the center pieces. The linens and runners were donated for the evening.

 The popcorn arch... The popcorn boxes were about 4.5' tall and cut out of cardboard. I used salad plates to make the 3 round arches at the top and then tapered in the bottom of the boxes by 3 - 4 inches. I then wrapped the cardboard in white butcher paper from the school. The stripes are red streamers from the dollar store. The popcorn box sides were then just taped together from the inside with clear packing tape from the dollar store. The arch I picked up from Amazon for 50 bucks (Portable Arch). I would use caution with this arch as it's not very sturdy and I would probably only use it indoors as I think the wind may knock it over easily. The popcorn logo (oval and "Popcorn") were cut on my Cricut using the Carousel font and a popcorn shape for the o's in popcorn. 

Our hall is massive and can be intimidating to decorate. The ceiling always perplexes me due to the sheer size of it and the church has many restrictions on what can and cannot be done. This certainly forces us to really use our creativity. I've not learned how to take a photo of the ceiling decorations so that you get a similar feeling as when your are there and experiencing it. I'll keep working on it! 

This year I knew that I wanted to have flying trapeze (all females) flying thru the air and lots of pennants/banners with stars.When hanging things on the ceiling we use wire we pick up from Lowes hardware (Hillman 19 Gauge Galvanized Steel Wire). The wire is better than fishing line or any string we've tried as it minimizes sagging. We have found that taping our decorations to the wire and then hanging the wire is the most efficient way to get this task done. It allows you to manipulate the placement of the decorations without killing yourself on a ladder moving things around. We do end up throwing all the wire and nearly all the taped decorations away at the end of the dance. We use the clear packing tape from the dollar store to adhere the decorations to the wire.

 Don't you love that giant elephant? We got lucky and were able to borrow it for the evening. That big guy was right next to the DJ who used some back lighting to highlight him the entire evening. I'm pretty sure you can pick him up on Amazon but I was not able to find the link.

The trapeze artist were hula hoops covered in red streams from the dollar tree. I was hoping to get dollar store hula hoops but they did not stock them in time for the dance and I ended up paying way too much for them on Amazon (Detable Hula Hoops) but they do break down for better storage! The trapeze gals were cut on my Cricut (larger than mat style) with card stock and I also cut some out by hand (cut a template w/my cricut) using the school's black butcher paper. Although, I liked that the hand cut ones were all one piece the butcher paper was kind of flimsy and I ended up gluing floral wire to the extremities to keep them in the desired position and to keep them from curling. Since these were hanging from the ceiling and the lighting would be muted, the wire was not seen and blended into the black paper. I did find red stars from the dollar store (I think 30 for a buck) and then used my cricut to cut out yellow and black ones.

In a separate post, I'll share a few more stations (craft, beverage and candy/dessert), the invitations the girls receive, the photo backdrop and a few more decorations.

Credo,
Lisa

For Part 2