Putting a little Bling onto your holiday table

As I began to think about setting my dining room table for the Christmas holiday I knew I wanted something very different from previous years tables. I am finally growing into my love for very shiny, sparkle, glitzy and,glittery things. I am ready to  have to confess to the world that  I love Bling!! I fell in love with these chargers at Z Gallerie

 But my love quickly faded to a "Sure do like these" once I saw that they cost $139.80 for  4. I later came up with a much quicker version that has endless possibilities. Here's my version of Bling Charger plates.

I started out with (4) old charger plates that were silver. I want a mixture of silver and gold this year ,so I spray painted the silver chargers, gold. You can then spray a clear shiny or mat sealer on the charger.  Alright, alright, I'll admit it, I really was just in too much of a hurry to see what these would look like and forgot to seal them!! Oh, the shame. Anyway,  I bought 3 bags of the glass beads  from the dollar store ( this was for 4 - 13" chargers). I bought mine at the Dollar Tree store . I already had a can of Krylon's  Looking Glass Mirror Like spray paint, I mean, what spray paint fan doesn't have a can of this stuff on the shelf!

The next step is to lay a small square of paper towel in the bottom of a small plastic tray and arrange glass bead in it, flat side up/. My small plastic trays are the empty Caesar Dog Food containers. I save them after I feed Trey and use them for a variety of craft projects. A small styrofoam meat try would work  jusas well. Or even a paper plate, well, you get the idea. The paper towel adsorbs the paint that lands in the tray ( not on a bead) and prevents it from getting on the top of the beads.

These beads have gotten 2 coats of the Mirror glass paint.

In this picture you can see the difference between a bead that has been painted and one that hasn't.

You can see right through the unpainted bead. But wait, here's one of those endless possibilities I mentioned. You might want the color of your charger to show through the bead. If you like that look, skip painting your beads!

 The next step is to simply start gluing the beads around the edge of the charger. It's just that easy. It takes approx. 50 beads per charger ( of course it will depend on the size of your charger and the beads). As the beads are not identical in size or shape ( some are more oval than round), as you get close to finishing, you will need to pick your beads more carefully so that you don't have a gap. I made sure that each bead touched the bead previously glued down. If you want you could add another row of beads.

 Now imagine, painting your charger whatever color you wanted and then adding the bling.  I also thought about gluing the beads first and then painting the charger. It would simply have a great textured edge.

I have since thought about making mirrored chargers by just buying 13 of 14" round mirrors and gluing the beads on those.  As it stands, I spent $3.00 to make 4 of these. I'm pretty satisfied.


What do you think?