Tips & Techniques Thursday: Stickled Straws

Hello, fellow Stickles-lovers! :) Welcome to our tip/technique/tutorial Thursday! Ashley here today from Made Especially For You to share with a fun project made using Stickles, of course, and some fun paper straws.

The awesome thing about Stickles is they can be put on just about literally everything, and that's our goal with these Tip/Technique days, to show you the plethora of ways Stickles can be used.

For the Super Bowl this past weekend I knew I wanted to make some fun decorations for the mini party we had at our house. I decided to make table decorations in the colors of the Super Bowl teams using some paper straws and toppers made with my Cricut. Before I show you how I made them, I'll show you what they looked like so you have a better idea of what I'm talking about:

The first thing I did was Stickle the straws. I purchased the paper straws at Michael's a while back - the purple ones are from a Halloween set and the red ones are from a Christmas set. I think I paid $1.99 for a pack of 16 - not too bad. You can get them online, too, in almost any color and for a good price.

I used 3 of each color straw, and Purple & Candy Cane colored Stickles.

Now, you'll notice I only Stickled part of the straw, and that's because I knew the toppers would be covering part of the straw, and that the straw would also be buried in the jar. I figured why waste Stickles when those parts of the straw weren't going to be shown? The stuff in the jar is shredded green construction paper, by the way, meant to represent the grass from the football field. :)

To Stickle the straws, I did it one side at a time. I Stickled one side, let it stand upright in a small Dixie cup to dry, and once it was completely dry I Stickled the other side of the straw so that I didn't have to worry about smearing had I Stickled the entire thing at once.

Once I finished the straws, I made toppers using various cuts from my Cricut:

I used cuts from Elegant Edges, 3 Birds on Parade, Father's Day, and Everyday Paper Dolls. The toppers with the football helmets are 3.25 inches and the other toppers are 3 inches. The football helmets are actually on Action Wobbles. :) I accented the toppers with some Tim Holtz Distress Ink and also Purple, Candy Cane, and Golden Rod Stickles.

They were a big hit! I definitely think I'll be using the Stickled straw idea again in the future. I love the way they looked and how it can turn a straw that might not be the right shade of color to match your project, into a shade that does match. The red was way too bright for dark red I needed, but adding the Candy Cane Stickles made the two a nearly perfect match.

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget you still have two days left to enter our anything goes linky party! Lots of great prizes from our sponsors up for grabs this month. :)