Cirque Balle

If you remember, a few weeks ago, I showed you the pennants I was making for a party. The event, a spin on Elsie de Wolfe’s Circus Ball, took place over the weekend. Most unfortunately, we had rain for 16 straight days, including a huge storm on Saturday afternoon, so the party had to be moved from the great lawn to the carriage house.

The original plan was to decorate two tables and the tent, and luckily, there was enough room in the carriage house to move several of the 10x20 foot tents inside. My pal, Andrea is super-creative, but as I was in the UK for two weeks, she was in China for two weeks, home a week, then in Europe for two weeks and back a week, much of our planning was done via email and Pinterest.

Our scheme was to be based on some blue and white china I have, and then add pink as an accent colour. I started making the pennants, all in blue and white fabrics. We got some cheapie hot pink and white striped fabric, tablecloths and napkins. The fabric was to cover the tent poles and give the impression of a striped circus tent. I bought two 100% cotton sheets to use as the overlay on the tables, cut them into 70” squares and sewed gold, and blue and white ribbon on them, and then added tassels to the corners.

We used the same blue and white ribbon to tie in bows around the white folding chairs, and borrowed a console table from Evergreen House to use for some lamps to light the tent and add some major interest. I had gotten the elephant from The Yard Sale last week and knew it would be a perfect addition.

We borrowed some huge blue and white import china containers from our friends at Halcyon House Antiques, and used them for the flowers – various shades of peonies along with some pale blue delphiniums!Andrea found huge tissue paper flowers on Etsy and we placed them around the inside to disguise the mechanics of the tent’s interior. We also hung a few from the peak of the tent, and we criss-crossed the interior with the smaller pennants.

Andrea also made the most amazing animals, using plastic jungle animals we’d found on eBay, spray-painting them gold, glittering them and then adding feathers, flowers, tutus and more! She also made little plinths for them to stand on, just like in a real circus.

Our adorable 11-year old friend, Aavo, made the most spectacular elephant cookies as a favour for each person at our two tables, and we also gave them the fun napkin rings we’d made with more of our gold and glitter animals. It’s all fun and games until someone tries to walk off with the decorations and then argues when you ask them not to!

So, here’s what all of the elements looked like when they were combined! Pennants around the perimeter of the tent, stripes along the tent poles, blue and white, and pink and white stripes on the tables and chair and tons of flowers everywhere. At the end, there were some peonies left, so I took them home and put them in an old silver water pitcher. They were just gorgeous and smelled amazing.

Thanks so much to Andrea for all of her hard work and creativity, and of course, her patience with me. Also thanks to the gentlemen at Halcyon House Antiques for allowing me to come plunder the shop; and to Ibello Upholstery for giving me some amazing fabrics so that I could make a variety of pennants; and to John Rosselli Associates for the stunning blue and white linen fabrics for even more pennants.