DIY: Chinese New Year table decor

The Chinese Lunar New Year is just around the corner with less than three weeks to go! Are you as excited as we are?? If you love decorating your home or office and haven't done so, here's a decor idea you can do on your own for not a lot of money... and minimum manual labour. This is also a wonderful little project to do with friends and family, and we'll bet your children would enjoy it too! Or at the very least, keep them out of mischief for a few hours :)

Here's what you need:

1. Glass bottles / tall vases
2. Gold-coloured wire
3. Red glitter
4. Boat-shaped "gold" tael bars
5. Limes
6. Gold-coloured Chinese New Year symbols such as or 'choy' or 'fook'
7. Your favourite long-stemmed flowers (enough for your vases and to scatter on the table)

Bottle collectors, it's time to put your hobby to good use! We had a collection of limited edition bottled water at our disposal, which happens to be a beautiful shade of red and just the right colour for Chinese New Year. But please feel free to choose a different colour!

The gold-coloured wire is easily found in florist shops or hardware stores, while the gold tael bars and red glitter can be found in stationery shops or places that sell home decor items. Silver or copper wires will work just as well with this concept, but there's nothing like good ol' gold for the Chinese New year!

For our flowers, we've chosen the gloriosa, which is a type of lily. You may use other flowers, of course, but choose one that is a little more hardy and long-lasting than, let's say, the rose. A flower with a bit of "flourish" (or "drama" if you will) is great for this look.

These Chinese New Year stickers are really handy! Use big ones or small ones, and use as many as you like. The children will LOVE helping you out with this! Remember, there are no rules when it comes to stickers...

Coil the wire around the bottle - any way you like! We just covered the top few inches of the bottle and let the rest hang out. It doesn't have to be neat, and the best part - you don't need glue for this! The wire will coil easily around the bottle since it came in a coil at the store, so it will already be all curly-wurly. Just tuck in the ends when you're done, to avoid scrapes and scratches.

Carefully put the stem of your flower through the loops of the wire until it is secure. If you like, you can even put two or three flowers in there.

To make sure that our flower doesn't move around too much, notice that we've coiled the wire a little narrower at the top. But if you have more than one flower in the bottle, you could loosen the coils a bit more. But just a bit!

When you've dressed up as many bottles as you like, it's time to dress up the table. Didn't we tell you this was so much fun to do?? Arrange the gold taels, limes and extra flowers in neat piles, then add a little more here and there. We like a little structure to our handicraft, but at the same time don't want to make it look like it was too carefully thought-out. For the grand finale, sprinkle the red glitter over the items! We hope you bought the thickly-cut kind, because fine glitter will easily get blown everywhere and get stuck on everything... and we mean e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. An alternative is to use sequins!

We hope you enjoy this little "Do-It-Yourself" table arrangement for the festive season. The beauty of this project is that it can be customized for any occasion with different colours, flowers and decorative items, or whether you use one or ten vases. Now just sit back, relax and admire your lovely (and inexpensive) Chinese New Year decor!