One of my very favorite places to shop for vintage pieces is Screendoor in Asheville.
After I get through perusing the goods, I spend time in their fabulous bookstore.
 


 
They have tons of decorating books. And the best part--their prices are all
 40-50% off the printed book price.

     
I discovered this hefty {254 pages!} gem. 

 
Notice what it's selling for at other stores?





Inside the front cover, the paper looked really familiar.





It looks like the one Emily Henderson used in the guest bedroom makeover on her HGTV
show a few weeks ago.



{Secrets from a Stylist}

The book traces the history of wallpaper, how to use it to create certain effects, as well as how to hang it.
 It also includes loads of beautifully papered rooms.   













It also includes over 150 full-size reproductions of the best contemporary wallpapers. 








You best believe Mai Chiang Dragon was included!





I haven't REALLY read it all yet. But, I can not wait to delve into it.
If you need to get some creative juices flowing, I highly recommend it!

Ironic that today finds yet another post about feathers!

This time, though, I was begrudgingly removing them. 
From my daughters hair.

 Is this all the rage where you live?

I credit this guy with starting the craze.

 

My daughter had accumulated a lot of feathers.

A lot.

One might not even know how many were actually attached.
She has been blessed with a load of hair.
 About the amount of 5 people combined.

I get the feather love.
But, I explained to her that the idea was to catch a subtle glimpse
of one or two. Not wear the whole bird on your head.
Subtlety and teenagers don't go hand in hand.

I digress.

We found out that feathers are now banned when playing volleyball
 and her first game was yesterday. 
Apparently, another player might find the hair accessory fowl or even distracting.

I also think that removing them made her much lighter, which allowed her to do a lot of this.

  
 
{She's in the blue}

And it worked!
We intimidated them even without our feathers and came out victorious!

Go mustangs! 

Are feathers a big deal where you live???

I showed you the centerpieces we made for the Gala yesterday. They are super easy to make. 



I ordered 24" eiffel tower vases. They come in clear, white, or frosted. I wanted to use
 frosted vases because it would hide the 6" stem of the foam bouquet holder and the
 lights. But, they were several dollars more a piece than the clear. 

So, I ordered the clear and bought Frosting Spray {around $5/can at Lowes} and
sprayed several light coats on each. 1 can did about 10 vases.



Here they are after getting their frosting.

 Once we got to Harrah's, we lined the vases up and placed a foam bouquet 
holder in each. {see how the frosting helps to hide the stem}
 




I bought 2 sizes of ostrich feathers. The most affordable way to buy the {expensive}
 feathers is by the pound. One pound of the taller {21-24"} feathers had around 170
feathers. The shorter wing tips {14-17"} came with around 200 feathers per pound. 

**Tip--if you order by the pound, count your feathers and make sure you have the quoted amount. Don't assume
they are correct. I was shorted 250 feathers!! That's 8 arrangements!! They did, however send me the additional ones**

I used 14 tall and 14 short {wing tips} feathers per arrangement.  We started around the
 bottom of the foam holder with a row of 5-7 of the longest feathers pushed in on a 45
degree angle. Then, moving up the holder, created another row using both long and
short {around 5-6}. We continued creating rows until we were straight up in the middle.       



{my awesome assistants, Angie and that's Heather hiding}

It is best to make your arrangements at least one day in advance. The feathers will relax
and fall a little over night. There were 5 of us making these and we made 42 in about an hour.

We lined them all up as we finished each one.


    

Once they were all finished we moved them into the Event Center.





Notice that they are lit up?! The vase was placed on a 4" LED disc that contained 9 lights.
 These discs came with 3 AA batteries and an on/off switch {$12}. They are so bright that not
only do they light up the vase but also the underneath side of the feathers.        



These discs were not my Plan A. I bought little battery operated LED tea
 lights that were supposed to fit into the vase.





These were fairly inexpensive {$2/pc} and I planned on using 3 in each vase.
Great in theory, but the vases were only 3/4" wide in the
middle {skinniest part} and the lights were 3/4" tall.    





The light discs ended up working so beautifully and they can be reused in next years gala.

With the addition of the feathers, we ended up with a 40" tall arrangement. This is great
 because it in no way blocks your view while talking to others at your table. But, as you can
 see, the bottom of the vase is super small--and it was placed on the 4" light disc. This made
 me a little nervous thinking that someone might knock into a table and end up with feathers
 in their martinis.

I decided to attach the vase to the light disc with zots dots.


   


{thanks to my friend Donna for giving me a box of these!}


I used 4 of these super sticky dots on the bottom of each vase and then stuck them 
down onto their light disc. They are not permanent, but, you have to work super hard
 to pull them apart! 





Since we still had the tealights, I wanted to add even more drama to the top
of the feathers by dropping a tealight into the middle of the feathers resting on top of
 the foam bouquet holder. There are so many feathers in the foam that it balanced
itself without needing anything else.

Just the one light added so much drama to the arrangement and allowed the middle
of the feathers, all the way to the tips, to glow. 






Jordan and Shelby made gold metallic table numbers that they threaded on a 
black tasseled rope.

 
 


They picked up the bouquet holder and placed the other end of the rope into the vase
and then placed the feathered bouquet holder back in, securing it in place.

Our Gala went off beautifully!! We decorated Friday and Saturday and the red carpet
was rolled out to welcome our guests at 6:30pm Saturday night!




































































Stop by tomorrow and I'll show you how we made the feather arrangements.