DIY Sports Table Centerpiece

Being on a budget really forces me to drain my creative juices to come up with cheap alternatives while party planning. One such instance was coming up with a sports themed table centerpiece. The package I got from my supplier only included 10 balloon centerpieces. I had more than 10 tables but I didn't want to add an additional P300 balloon arrangement per table anymore. I knew I could come up with something... and that I did. If you read my supplier ratings, you'll know that the finished product looked like this, but let me share how I did it. =)

I spent a lot of time online getting ideas and if I could have executed it in the exact way I wanted, I would have used a metal tin bucket as the base and a real foam finger. But since I had to make do with what was readily available, the tin bucket became a hot food bowl I got from the grocery and the foam finger was just printed on cardboard paper. ;p

Here are the materials I used:
-  hot food bowls - I got these from Shopwise at about P85 for 10 pcs.
- styrofoam - there are lots of different thickness available in National Bookstore, but I already bought these 2ft x 4ft x 1/2" boards (P49 each) which I used for Sabre's name. So I just made do with the leftovers.
- colored cartolina
- cardboard paper
- barbeque sticks
- Japanese paper
- masking tape
- glue
- scissors

These hot food bowls were really a lucky find since it was the exact size I needed. Plus the color was kind of brown so I decided to just stick with the design instead of covering it with Japanese paper.
* If you'll notice though, the label says "Little Princess" and if you look really closely, the design is made up of castles and stars. But who cares? It looks fit for a boys party to me! ;p

For the base, I knew I needed styrofoam to be able to stick the flags in. I traced the base of the bowl on the styro and cut out the circles which would then fit inside.

I used 4 styro circles per bowl to achieve the height that I wanted to be able to stick the flags in - the cardboard hand in the middle and two flags on each side.
* Like I said, I just used leftover styro. You can just buy one with a thicker width so you don't have to pile them up anymore.

 I then searched for foam finger images online, picked one I liked and edited it with Sabe's name. I made 2 versions, one the mirror image of the other, so I could stick them back to back.

I used masking tape to attach the bbq stick on the cardboard cut out of the hand. Make sure the pointy end of the stick is on the bottom so you can easily pierce it through the styro base. Then I just aligned the other side of the hand and glued it together.

I then cut triangles out of green and orange cartolina and pasted the words Happy Birthday and #1 on them. I then did the same thing as I did with the cardboard hand above to attach the bbq stick to the triangle flags.
* Of course, you can also just do the layout of the flags on your computer and just print these out to make it easier (no more extra cutting and pasting needed). I just wanted to add more dimension to the flags... and make my life harder! ;p

I assembled everything in the venue itself. I also had extra balls from the giveaways I bought so I placed these on top so you wouldn't see the styro below. The balls also added extra weight to the centerpiece so that it wouldn't easily topple over. I also stuffed some "grass" in between the balls by cutting up strips of Japanese paper.

So there you have it, my version of a DIY sports table centerpiece! A lot of what I did here was based on just winging it so I definitely had a lot of trial and error. But I had so much fun doing it that especially when you see your vision come to life (naks!). ;p