As promised, here are some photos of the tissue paper pom poms with LED lights inside. They were easy and inexpensive to make - and they made last weekend's party feel romantic and special. I followed Martha Stewart's instructions for making the puffs....and then put them on steroids with the lights! My phone photos don't do justice, but you can get the idea.
I love how the puffs look like they are floating on air. Fishing line worked great for suspending them over the dance floor. Here, about half of them are up and even with the house lights on you can see them glow.
Here they are with the lights turned down.
For centerpieces, I used wine glasses and vases (even ice cream sundae dishes) to raise them up off the mirror tiles. The mirror squares underneath reflected the light and added a great effect. We put votive candles all around to add more sparkle.
The house lights are on in this photo so you can see the detail of the pom poms. Fluffy!
All in all, it was a lovely, romantic look for a budget price. Batteries and LED's were purchased online for a very small cost, but they are available at places like Radio Shack and Walmart if you are in a real hurry and cost is no issue. (Link to lights)
Now, here is a little diagram of how we did the lights, just in case you'd like to try this yourself.
Simply tape the legs of the LED's (long legs on positive side of battery, short legs on negative side) to the small batteries. The lights will be "on" as long as they are touching the battery. Poke a small hole through the layers of tissue and stick one of the bulbs down through it to light up the bottom half of the puff. The battery and top bulb will sit on the paper and light the top half. You can get the best "glow" by folding the paper over in the centers to surround the bulbs to diffuse the light. We used blue lights with white tissue, but the color combinations could be endless, between the tissue and bulb colors available.
I really feel like we out-Martha'd Martha on this one! What do you think?
