Fish eggs to Floral Beauty

As you know from yesterdays post I am working on a new dresser for the master bedroom...and what is a dresser without some great decorations to go on top of it.  My inspiration came of pinterest (of course) where they should you how to put flowers in a bowl...well I can put flowers in a bowl so that got my inspiration going.  While I was at WalMart (I know Target Im so sorry, get a floral department and I will never leave) I saw some, what looked like fish eggs, glass beads in al different colors.  I saw clear and purple and knew I would one day use them in my bedroom.  Well that one day came sooner than later.  Here is a picture of what the fish eggs look like before they got all crazy big.

What you do is add them to 2 quarts of water and let me sit for 6 hours (I left mine overnight).  After the 6 hours is over, drain the extra water and you are ready to go.  Below is the expanded version in my flower bowl.

I packet filled up 1/2 of this bowl, the purple ones are under the clear.  To make sure you keep the color seperated you need to put a wax sheet of paper betweern the layers.  I learned from my mistake, I thought it would be cool to have the colors mix together...well when you mix them you cant see the clear so the effect is totally lost!
    Now my bowls were ready for the flowers.  I mentioned earlier I got my inspiration from pinterest, well the below is what pinterest showed me.  You use making tape to section off whatever it is you are going to use for your flowers then put one flower in each section.  I was only using 6 flowers so I didnt make very big sections.

On a side note, the main draw back to the water beads is that they dont keep the flowers in place as well as the actual glass beads do.  On the flip side of that, they make it so much easier to put the flowers in the beads.  In my experience once the glass beads were in it was always a struggle to get the perfect arrangement of flowers.  Pros and cons to everything, I just happen to think with the water beads the pros outweight the cons. 
    Ok moving on, so I put my flowers in the bowls how i thought they looked best, added some of the leaves from the cut off stems and voila! beautiful floral arrangements.  Total, each piece cost $30 (the flowers were $4/each at 40% off so the flowers will probably always be the most expensive part of a floral arrangement).  Not too shabby when they probably would sell for $70!!

I think the final step for making an awesome topper for my dresser is to make a table runner...more to come on that later!!