Dreams and A Dozen Roses . . .

A friend handed me $25 in instant lottery tickets . . wow! . . for me?! . . got excited til I realized they weren't for me . . *sigh . She wanted to do up a gift basket, (but she is a bit creatively challenged), for a fundraiser for a dear friend of hers that is suffering from cancer. So my "creative mind" started working overtime (my favorite part of a project!) and chugging and steaming like that darned ole train . . yes . . yes . . YES I can!

After going thru my stash, I found these red candle roses that my daughter made for favors for her wedding. They are rose shaped candles that I think she got from Oriental Trading Company - she wrapped a stick with floral tape, added two leaves and stuck the stick into the candle. These will work, I thought . . I will do six of them with three lottery ticket leaves on each and hang the remaining lottery tickets from a ribbon .. so got out my glue gun (what a wonderful invention this glue gun is!) and made leaves from the instant lottery tickets to put on the rose stem . . .

ummmm . . really don't like the looks of these . . . don't have much else I can use . . what can I do . . i have a dozen of these red rose candles . . ummmm . . I know . . I'll make a dozen long stemmed roses with some kind of greenery behind the roses! . . So . . put on the boots, grabbed the purse and off to the dollar store I went . . bought a vase, colored marbles to put in the vase and a fern bunch with 6 branches on it . .

Oh yes . . I like this much better! I cut off every other stem on the fern branch, folded the instant lottery ticket and hot glued the ticket on the stem. I used two fern branches and 9 tickets on each. You have to be careful NOT to get glue on the bar code on the back of the instant ticket! And do all your folding where it won't affect the scratch part. I use a hot glue gun because it dries right away and if you make a mistake or change your mind, you can just peel it right off without doing damage to the ticket.

I chose to put marbles in the vase as a weight . . as well as for looks . . as the candle roses are a bit top heavy and the marble did a wonderful job of holding the stems in place!

I then added a few sprigs of small white carnations within the red roses and the two fern lottery branches behind the the flower arrangement.

I then wrapped the vase in a clear plastic gift bag, adorned with gold curling ribbons, the extra instant lottery tickets and hot glued small pearl beads to the outside of the plastic gift bag.

This project took me about an hour and a half to complete. So if you need an idea for a shower, fundraiser, door prize, etc. and just don't have the time to make a lengthy craft, why not try something with instant lottery tickets! It's a gift that keeps on giving!

mw . . thanks for getting me to think outside of the box when it came to my crafts . . I miss you . . 2/22/99