How We Made Our Twilight-themed Centerpiece

If you're throwing a Twilight-themed party, it might be fun to make a cool Twilight-themed centerpiece. Here's how Twi-K and I made the "Bella's Dream" centerpiece that we brought to TwiCon 2010 in San Francisco.

First, we came up with an idea: to create a scene from the movie (in this case, a forest-bedroom dream scene that was cut from the movie with Bella, Edward, and a wolf, but had a lovely, romantic quality to it that we really liked.)

Then, we brainstormed how to create this scene, starting what we already had (in this case, Bella and Edward dolls and a wolf figurine.)



Then, we headed to a hobby store to buy a dollhouse-size bed and dresser that would work with our Bella doll. We also looked at materials to make the base for the scene, but realized that we needed the actual still shot of the scene to reproduce it, and more time to think about how much time and money we wanted to spend on it.

After consulting the still shot of the scene (and consulting the resident "expert" from our local hobby shop,) I decided to use a mix of live materials to look like a real forest (twigs, cut-up pine needles, and large redwood chips) with tradition scenery from the hobby shop (black styrofoam base, artificial grass mat, and artificial dark foliage for the bushes.) Luckily, I found a nice dollhouse-size floor mirror to complete the scene. I got my kids to help find small twigs, pine needles and wood chips from our back yard (they loved helping out!)



To assemble it all, I placed my laptop (with the photo of the scene) in front of me as I worked. I used regular white school glue to stick the base together and then sprinkled the pine needles onto the mat. The Edward doll wouldn't stand up on his own, so I used black Play-Doh under his feet to "stick" him down and balance him. I had to punch holes in the grass mat to stick the twigs into so they'd stand up. Then I stuck the dark foliage onto the twigs (it stayed on without any glue.)




Bella's purple comforter was the highlight of the centerpiece. We bought two shades of purple felt to make it. Twi-K consulted a photo of the actual comforter to cut up the leaf and vine pattern out of the darker felt, then glued it onto the lighter purple. Then we put Bella under the comforter and draped it over the bed. We also made sheets and a pillow case for the bed out of white felt. We just cut out the shapes and sewed (or taped) them onto the bed. The effect looked really nice.




I wanted to add details on Bella's dresser (in the scene it held a tray of candles and a small oval mirror) just for fun (and because I'm very slightly obsessive,) so I turned to my son for ideas. He immediately came up with a perfect tray of candles from his LEGO blocks. At first, I couldn't figure out how to make the tiny oval mirror. I tried various small doll mirrors, but none really worked. Finally, I took two gold paper clips, some tiny pliers, a bit of aluminum foil, and cardboard. I cut out an oval for the mirror, covered it with aluminum foil, and bent the paper clips into the stand for the mirror. It took a while to make, but it looked nice when it was finished. Much better than a doll mirror.



So that was it. It was a fun group project--even my family got involved. My kids liked it so much, we still display the centerpiece on our dining table! (Thanks, hubby, for being so supportive of my Twilight habit!)

We made other centerpieces, too, but "Bella's Dream" won the centerpiece contest, so I thought I'd share that one first. If you'd like to hear about how we made our other centerpieces, please let us know!

To see how we made our "Twilight Kisses" centerpiece, click here.
To read about my Twilight Convention experience, click here.