Globe Centerpieces

I have some close friends who run a non-profit that does mission trips around the world, and I agreed to help them decorate tables for their first fundraising dinner. I had seen an inspiration photo on Pinterest where someone had painted gold continents on blue globes, so I copied this look and I am really happy with how it turned out.

Each table had a flag from one of the places they had done a mission trip, so we glued floral foam to the inside of the globe to anchor the flags.

We used the centerpieces the next day at an international dinner we had at our church.

Here is a screenshot of the inspiration picture. I would love to give credit to the person who came up with this idea, but the Pinterest pin is just an uploaded photo and I can't figure out where it came from. If you know, please comment and send me the information so I can give credit where credit is due.

Here are the globes taking over my kitchen. FYI, this project took a little more time than I thought it would. But it was totally worth it.

I couldn't find the little reed balls in stores, so I made them myself out of yarn and twine.

I didn't take photos of me making the paper globes, but I basically traced continents onto the globes in gold sharpie (don't use the super-thin gold sharpie. It didn't work at all. I used one of the thicker pens), and then I filled in with gold paint. I got the continents from this Scholastic post. If the continents aren't the right size for the globes, use a copier to adjust the size. I added about 25%.

We bought these 10" lanterns from Amazon that cost about $10 for 10.  We accidentally bought too many but that turned out to be a good thing because I messed up a few and needed more. In the inspiration pic, it looks like the globe is sitting in a dish, but that was out of my budget, so I just carefully bent the prongs of the wire frame so it would sit flat.

We bought a pack of beveled mirror squares from Amazon, similar to these. We paid about $20-25 for them.  Candles didn't work to light the globes, so we bought these LED lights for about $11 and put three in each globe. It is also much safer than the other lighting options.

I was surprised about how much I loved this twine ball craft. I got the instructions from the blog Key to Flow. I love how cheap it is and you can use them for events, for your home or decorating for holidays.  This recipe uses paper mache paste made from flour, sugar and water. I tried the glue recipe I found on Pinterest but it didn't work as well, it was messier, and it was more expensive because I ran out of the paste really fast.

You basically wipe Vaseline on balloons, run yarn or twine through the paper mache paste, wrap it around the balloon and hang to dry. I used ornament hangars to hang them.

The twine worked really well, but the yarn took longer to dry and wasn't as hard as the twine. But they both worked. 

Here are a couple in my kitchen.  I think for Christmas I am going to hang some on a string of LED lights.

The following week, a friend and I threw a baby shower so we decided to re-use and do a Welcome to the World theme. We hung the globes and put them on the dining table, and my talented friend cut up some old maps and used real globes and old suitcases as well. 

One really annoying thing about me is that I always forget to take photos of the things I create at the actual event. So there are no good photos of the paper globes I put on the tables at the shower. 

These are clipboards with maps and letters hung on the windows. 

We played a pacifier chopsticks game we got from this website. We had a relay race with two groups. The players held a chopstick in their mouth, ran to pick up a pacifier with the chopstick and then passed it down the line. It was a lot of fun. We also played an Around the World matching game from Pinterest, where you match the word "baby" in different languages.