All Beauty and No Beast!

We just marked the start of summer at our house:  completion of dance recital performances!  My kiddo's ballet school has a special way of doing recitals:  they do a full ballet with two performances in lieu of a standard recital that includes all the students from age 5 to age 18 in the show!  The high school seniors and advanced dancers have the starring roles; the younger classes have supporting roles.  My daughter's class performed as the Silverware and the Dream Belles. The parents do the set design and creation, make costumes, do lighting, stage management, house management, handle tickets, props, sound, and keep the kids ready for their parts! Some dads even have roles in the performances!  It is such a huge production and undertaking!  I took off two weeks of work to help and I needed an extra week to recover, but that didn't happen!  (My daughter always seemed so surprised that I was tired when she was the one dancing.)

Rehearsal for the Finale

Each year, at the December Mother-Daughter Tea, we learn which ballet the girls will perform in June so we have known for a bit that this year would be Beauty and the Beast.  The two employees (and that includes the owner!!) of the school choreograph the show and teach the girls their parts.  I find it incredible that they do this all with parent volunteers and only two employees.  It really is remarkable!  This is the 30th year for the school and the current owner is the daughter of the original owner.  It is a family affair in many ways! And it is so much more...they make all the little girls feel important and like they are part of something BIG!  My daughter told me, "Whatever the year, my class always has important parts in the ballet!"  (And that from a salad fork, her role in one of her dances!)  They make it fun, using a blend of the traditional music from the ballet as well as some from the Disney movie.  It seamlessly works together like magic.

Each year, my daughter gives Opening Night gifts to the ballerinas in her class.  For the past couple of years, I have made the gifts and tried to make them as wearable keepsakes that represented the ballet for that year.  You can see last year's post on the Cinderella Ballet by clicking here!  

Last year was Cinderella!

Each year, it seems a little harder to think of something that the girls would enjoy.  My daughter, at age 10, is one of the youngest in her class.  Students in this pre-pointe class go all the way to middle school.  I thought silver bangle bracelets might be the way to go this time around and my kiddo approved.  I fell in love with Alex and Ani bracelets but needing eleven meant I had to come up with something that wouldn't break the bank! I found so many great options with A Bead Story brand!  Their round bangle bracelets feature a screw-off bead on the ends which makes adding and changing beads a snap!  This is so easy! Their spacer beads have what I suppose is a silicone liner that keeps the beads from sliding too much.  After depleting the supply of bangle bracelets at the store nearest me, I went online and found slightly different oval bracelets, a different brand.  They worked just fine and my daughter actually liked those better for her small wrist!

I chose beads that represented elements of the story:  the rose, the yellow dress, the dancers, the dome over the rose.  These girls have all out-grown the Disney Princesses and so those icons were not an option for this project.  

I added spacer beads between the charms.  These made the various charms seem to be more integrated with the whole bracelet, though admittedly, less like the style I had originally been trying to copy.

I also made some drop charms using head pins, crystals, and smaller silver beads.

I found my supplies at Hobby Lobby for the A BEAD STORY round bracelets and all siver beads.  The oval bracelets were from ebay.  I found the crystals at Michaels.  The ballerina charms and the crystal ball charms came from both michaels.com and Hobby Lobby.  The 3D flower charms came from Michaels physical store.  The flat siver roses and the large amber rondelles were from Fire Mountain Gems.  The small crystals and head pins came from Michael's. 

To package them, I used my favorite gift box:  the jewelry box on the Cricut cartridge, Bridal Shower (page 14).  I cut it at 11".  

I use upholstery batting (dacron) for the inside padding.  

I decorated the tops with yellow roses.  I learned to make these from Juliana Michaels when she was part of the fantastic Circle Design Team.  You can find her video on how to make them here.  She uses Mother's Day Bouquet to make them.  They are fabulous!  For the sizes, I have a cheat cheat based on the sizes I make them:

I cut the ones for my boxes using key 27 cut at 1.25" and key 8 cut at 2.75".  Juliana shows how to make them on her video (link above).  

After cutting the floral pieces, I assemble them using hot glue.  The nice thing about having an Explore and an Expression is that you can cut the same thing on both machines since you can use the physical cart in the Expression and the digital version in the Explore.  For projects with lots of duplication, it really makes the cutting go fast!

Wrapped with yellow ribbon and tagged.  

Of course my kiddo gets one of the bracelets, and all of the ballerinas receive flowers from their families on opening night, but I also get her something special.  I decorated her gift bag with another yellow rose, but I wanted to go overboard on size so I made one from the Cricut cartridge Giant Flowers, cut at 10.5"  

She kept it and put it on a shelf.  It is a fun decor piece!

They were a hit (always a relief!) and it's always fun on opening night with all the energy and excitement.  Gifts just add to the fun.  I will say that this is my daughter's fifth ballet, but the first one where she smiled during all of her performances.  She really looked like she was having fun.  

Thank you so much for letting me share my project and photos of my kiddo!  

But wait!  There's more! On a totally unrelated note, I wanted to give a big shout-out to my friend, Danita, and suggest you go look at her blog.  She has been ramping-up glass etching and she doesn't use etching cream.  She does what she calls "Air Erasing" and I was so impressed (and scared) that I think you need to see this!  She always does great work and has made several blog posts of her projects, but this time, she shows us a tutorial and all of her tricks!  Check it out:  Danita's Designs.  And if you need a little more of a nudge, she says that it is easy, cheaper after the initial set-up, and you get a much nicer effect than by using etching cream on your glass items!  True, high quality etched glass items that look like high-end boutique gifts!!  Ooooo...maybe next year's ballet will feature etched glass pendants!  I'll be driving to Danita's house for help with those!

Cinderella, Cinderella, All I Hear is Cinderella

 My friends and family on Instagram and Facebook probably feel that all they have heard from me is 'Cinderella' these days.  That is because my kiddo attends a special ballet school that produces a full ballet at the end of the spring term in lieu of a regular recital.  All the girls participate, from tiniest with the smallest parts and easiest dances to the graduating seniors who have specially-choreographed solos and starring roles to everyone in between.  It is unique and special and heavily involves parent volunteers who create sets and costumes, and fulfill all duties outside of the performance itself... well, actually some dads do perform too!  It requires a big time commitment from the students, parents, and fabulous teachers (all two of them!!) and it always feels worth it in the end!  This is my daughter's fourth ballet.  This year, as you may have guessed, they performed Cinderella.

I have been the room mother for the past couple of years for my child's class, a job that I really love.  This year, she was moved to a class that meets twice a week and we just adore the sweet girls and moms we have gotten to know this year!  Each year, Piper gives her classmates a keepsake for the ballet for opening night.  This year, it was necklaces.  Since all the girls usually are given fresh flowers for opening night by family and friends, her gift is something a little different.

These were super easy to do. (Thank you Sandie for helping me at Archivers!  I had my friend and crafty genius point me to those great bottle cap pendant bases.  Check out her blog, Chic Green Dragonfly.)

I printed out the text on my computer onto scrapbooking paper and used a 1" punch to cut them out.

I glued them into the bottle caps...

...and I used the negative space from a Martha Stewart punch to get little stars (my child's class danced the parts of the stars and the hours)...

....and outlined the paper with Glossy accents and added iridescent crystal glitter to edge the paper.

I filled in the surface of the bottle cap with Glossy Accents to seal it.  Magically, the glitter tends to move around a bit.  That was a happy accident.  The Glossy Accents require a few hours to dry.  As it dries, I noticed that air bubbles would surface so I tried to catch and pop them as soon as they appeared.

I found 2.4mm ball chain by the roll with clasps and charms at Hobby Lobby.  The combination of the sale going on and the fact that this is dance recital time, meant that finding ballet shoe charms was not going to happen!  Actually, finding eleven of any one charm was impossible so we mixed them up a bit.  I used 9mm jump rings to join the charms and the pendent to the ball chain.  The chain was cut at 24".

My kiddo requested a green one.

To package them, I cut inserts from glitter paper using Cricut Holiday Frames and Tags at 2-3/4".  I used a star hand-punch and cut slits from the edge to the stars for the chain to fit into.

I made boxes using Cricut Bridal Shower, cut at 9-3/4".

Cut at this size, the box bottom is 2-3/4" square; the top is 3" square.  The finished thickness is 2-1/8" so I used a little Dacron upholstery batting cut-to-fit to put in the bottoms.

I was so happy with the final gift.  I hope they liked them.

For my daughter's opening night gift, and because the grandparents always get her flowers, my daughter always receives three gifts from us:  a book of some sort related to the story of the ballet, a music CD from the ballet, and something completely unrelated to the ballet, but that I know she wants.  For her gifts, I used a kraft paper bag, my 'test' bottle cap charm, and an extra necklace insert to make a tag.

Each year, we have a reception after the second performance where mom volunteers bring fruit and desserts for a little treat table.  This year, I found a recipe that I altered a bit for Pink Lemonade Cookies.  I wanted to share that with you too.

I started with a recipe I found at the Tasty Kitchen website.  Click here for their recipe, that they call Pink Lemonade Gooey Butter Cookies.  I loved that they used a cake mix to make it fast and then added touches like fresh lemon zest!  (The cake mix I used was Pillsbury Moist Supreme Pink Lemonade Premium Cake Mix, 15.25oz).  It makes a nice, stiff dough that is really pretty and reminds me of the color of "ballet pink" tights.

I will say that I changed the recipe a bit:

• I use Butter-flavor Crisco for my cookies.   (My fellow foodies are probably shaking their heads at this, but honestly it keeps cookies from going flat so I always use it instead of dairy butter in cookie recipes).
• I used Vanilla Sugar instead of plain granulated sugar for the first rolling.  (To make vanilla sugar, just add a vanilla bean, cut and split, to regular or super-fine granulated sugar.  Sometimes I will use the vanilla bean first in vodka to make homemade vanilla extract and then dry the bean off and use it in the sugar.  Keep it in an air-tight container and in a few weeks, you have vanilla-infused sugar!   As you use it up, just add more plain sugar!)

• Not so sure the author's cookies came out of the oven looking like the picture.  The condensation of a cooling cookie, as we all know, will dissolve powdered sugar with its fine texture very easily.  Even with the first roll in granulated sugar and second roll in powered sugar, I used a sifter and added more powdered sugar right out of the oven, and on at least one batch, I added it twice.  

Right out of the oven.

The cookies on the left were fresh out of the oven and just powered.  The ones on the right were almost cooled.  The sugar dissolves as they cool.   Really, they are best just like they appear on the right so your guest doesn't end up with sugar all over her dress and lap!

• Because I was in a time crunch, even as my dough got soft, I did not refrigerate it.  My sugar-coated hands kept the dough from sticking to me.
• I wanted these to sparkle a bit so I found edible glitter at a nearby cake supply store.  If you are looking for a source for this stuff, check out my local supplier, Bryant's Cake and Candy Supplies. They ship from their on-line store.  It comes in all kinds of colors, like silver and florescent pink.  This is the Rainbow (which is like Crystal Aurora Borealis or CAB).  It was subtle; next time I am trying the silver!  This is added after the cookies are baked, sugared, and cooled.  

This recipe made a really tasty cookie with a tender crumb, wonderful texture, lovely color, and fresh lemon flavor.  Unlike the indication from the title, they are not gooey inside (happily), but owe much to the cream cheese baked in them!  They are my new favorite cookie!

This is always such a busy time of year, but this experience is so meaningful to our family and to my daughter that it is more than worth it!

Cinderella 2013 - click photo for close up

....And it is a good thing because I found out that for the next two ballets I will will be trained to take over for the mom who is the lead coordinator for the production.  (Her daughter graduates in two years).  Honestly, I am really looking forward to it... and to the many years and many ballets my daughter will get to perform in!

Thank you for checking my blog post!  I hope you are having a fun and happy summer!  Ballet performance week kicks off the first official week of summer kid programs for us.  Next up:  Guitar Camp!