I’ve always had a “thing” for sparkly sticks in vases or buckets.  No really, I have!  See, my flower arrangement in the downstairs bathroom has a few.

I found a few inspirational projects on Pinterest that verified that I am not the only one who likes this particular décor choice.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

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Photo credit

Aren’t they fun?  Since we have 23 trees here, finding sticks was not a problem.  The sticks should be dry, and fairly straight.  Here’s our stick pile, when I first pulled them off the trees.

I trimmed all the extras off the branches, then lightly sanded them down, so there weren’t any thorns or rough edges.  I dusted them off with a clean rag.

Then I laid them out and sprayed paint until my hand was deformed.  (It seriously was, it was hard to type even a few hours later!)  I used a brown spray paint, which was actually primer, that we had leftover from a project from I don’t even know when.

Since I enjoy a lil sparkle in my life, after I sprayed them, while the paint was still wet, I scattered some glitter on them.  Then I flipped them over and repeated the whole process.  After that was complete, I sprayed a clear top coat on, to add a little shine, and to (hopefully) keep the glitter from falling off.

(Note:  This project is the one I referenced in the clocks are trying to kill me post, that ended with a sparkly brown driveway and a half finished project.  Since I’ve now had the benefit of nearly two weeks gone by with this project waiting to be finished, I can definitively say that the glitter did not stick very well to the wet paint.  There is still some there, but it is not nearly as sparkly as I would like.  I’m going to try it again with some spray glue.  And some daylight.)

I initially had the buckets I found at my grocery store for $3, mentioned on my Facebook page, slated for this project.  But when I put them in I felt like I should play that sound effect that they make on game shows when people lose.  Wah wah wah wah.  The size of the buckets just completely dwarfed the sticks.  This was part of the reason I didn’t finish the project that night, because I just didn’t like the way it looked.  Although, it did look better in person – I think it looks more sad in the picture than real life.  I tried a few ways to liven it up – ribbon, flowers…  I just wasn’t loving it.

So, with the benefit of two weeks, I decided to try it again with a vase.  I put some flowers in to add a pop of color.

Ta-da!  Oh doesn’t that look better now? I think this would be really fun with some ornaments for Christmas.  Or with a bigger vase, with pumpkins, for fall.  I’m definitely going to revisit this project soon and dream up more ways to decorate with sparkly sticks.

Tell us what projects you’ve come up with to use every day things.  Who else likes sparkly stuff on sticks?  Who’s done a project that didn’t quite turn out how you expected, and found a way to fix it?

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