Birthday Bouquet

$15 - $20 (based on 2022 prices)

Makes one bouquet

In 2022, I was asked by a local theater to make props for their production of Christmas Belles. Because employment issues halted the prop-building process the year prior, I jumped at the opportunity to do something creative. For this item, the director wanted a tacky arts-and-crafts bouquet for one of the characters to sell in their mediocre flower shop, so, working with the director’s vision, I fashioned this ordinary bouquet. Because of its generic design, you can use it as a basic template for your own builds and cater it to your haunt’s needs. For example, you can dust everything with light coats of black and brown spray paint and deflate the balloons to give it an aged look to sit beside a tombstone or you can replace the “Happy Birthday” sign with a heart and splatter the entire bouquet with fake blood for a bloody Valentine’s Day display. The possibilities are endless!

• One seventeen-inch metal vase
• One 4 oz. bottle of decoupage medium
• One roll of colorful wrapping paper (roughly seventeen square feet)
• Two to three bags of marbles (roughly thirty marbles per bag)
• An assortment of artificial onion grass and white hyacinths
• One glittery “Happy Birthday” sign
• Three latex balloons
• Four plastic balloon sticks

1. Strip any decorative details off of the vase to give it a clean surface. If you decide to use a glass or plastic vase, you may want to use a sheet of coarse sandpaper to roughen its surface so the decoupage medium will stick.

2. Cut or tear apart the wrapping paper. You can isolate certain images or use random sections (as I did). Then, cover the entire surface of the vase with the cuttings. This process works best if you move in stages: apply a layer of glue to one section, press the paper down until it sticks, and repeat the process. Once you are done, give the vase a final layer of the medium to serve as a sealer.

3. Fill the vase’s base with marbles to give it extra weight and prevent it from becoming too top heavy once you add the balloons and flowers. If you plan to display this outdoors in windy conditions, you may want a lot of marbles or heavy stones to add further stability.

4. Arrange the hyacinths and onion grass in the vase, varying their heights to give the bouquet more visual interest. At the director’s request, I used just white flowers; however, you can use alternate hues or an assortment of colors to cater the prop to your needs.

5. Glue the “Happy Birthday” sign to one of the balloon sticks and insert it into the center of the bouquet. Then, inflate the balloons, attach them to the three remaining balloon sticks, and position them around the sign to frame it. For aesthetic consistency, pick balloons that match the colors in the wrapping paper.

6. The prop can be embellished with additional details. For instance, I eventually wove a string of small LED lights into the bouquet to make the prop even more visible from the audience.