December 2003

Our marathon began at 6am on December 17th. We filled our family room with mattresses, snacks and sleepy girls to watch the extended DVDs of the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. We then piled into the car and went to the local movie theater (joined by two more girlfriends) for a 5pm showing of Return of the King. Afterwards we came back at the house and partied late into the night. We ate junk food, a Hobbiton themed cake and played LOTR Trivial Pursuit. It was a crazy but fun thing to do. Our motto was "you are only young and foolish once and the LOTR only premiers once in a lifetime"...

Dwarfish Inspiration

The inspiration for our party favors came from the incredible Mr. John Rhys-Davies. At the end of the Two Towers cast commentary, he made the suggestion that anyone going to the finial film should "bring a large hankie". Of course! What could be better than a pretty and practical keepsake?

There are many lovely "iconic" designs from the Lord of the Rings films - the horse of Rohan, the tree of Gondor ect. - but in the end we decided on the simple but elegant Lorien leaf brooches.

Creating the Favors

We began by finding a picture of the design online. We sized it to the desired size and printed the picture out. We used a sharpie marker to outline the design, so we could see it more clearly. We then placed a washed and pressed cotton hankie over the paper. The hankies were thin enough that we could see the design without a light box or anything, which was nice.

We then took a gold metallic craft pen and drew the outlines and date. The hankie was then ironed to heat-set the paint.* We next applied the fabric paint. We did this by hand, using the smallest brush we could find. It wasn't hard, nor did it take that long, it was fun actually. While the paint was still wet, fabric glitter was sprinkled over the design. After the paint had dried, we shook off the access glitter. Ta da!

supplies used

finished hankie

a close-up

Wet Leaves & Proper Credit

Mr. Rhys-Davies suggestion turned out to be a wise one and our favors were used by one and all. I have thrice seen Return of the King in the theater and have used my hankie every time.

I have said "we" through out this page (for the sake of simplicity) but I must admit that my disgustingly talented sister, Bridget, did most of the actual work. While I helped in the planning and testing stage it was Bridget that outlined, pressed, painted and glittered each favor. Good job sis!

*Although we followed the directions given with the craft pen, when we washed our hankies the gold paint washed out, leaving a tarnished silver colored outline. That was disappointing. Perhaps we didn't iron them long enough? I don't know...