Something For The Wall

For a very long time I have been wondering what could I do to dress-up my family room Mantel area. I couldn't come to terms with the idea of buying something from the store and having it placed. But I am no artist to do a canvas painting. I even thought of doing some abstract painting but I was reluctant to buy that big piece of a canvas (costs quiet a bit) only to find that oh well there it goes in the pooper!

One of these days while I was doing my usual browsing on the internet (Pinterest specifically) I came across a picture with no description or anything. Here is the picture below. WOW, that is it, that should be an easy one to make, big enough for a mantel. But I had no idea where to start, what to look for.  I tried various combination of search words for the candle holders but nothing I could find that I liked or that could drive the effort.

                  Months went by and had totally forgotten about this until.........

One day I was starting to read about Terrarium and saw this pic in one of the related blog. I immediately knew this is what I have been looking for! So its not candle holders but its a Terrarium globe that I need to look for. I was absolutely thrilled and my brain seemed like it had already planned how I want to make it a reality.
I knew I had to buy nails to hang them, I was going to go with wooden board for the back, both of which I knew I could get in Home Depot. I was going to do my little staining project on the wooden board.
But I din't have to go that far. While we were shopping at Home Depot my husband was able to find a pre-cut black chalkboard (made of thick cardboard) that was more or less the size that I was looking for.
From here on my effort ended and I was more of a project manager than the hands on worker. That's right once again ladies and gentlemen introducing my husband :). I explained him how I wanted it to be placed/hung and he diligently measured and drilled holes on the board and screwed in the nails. I painted (black) around the nail drill area that had exposed the cardboard particles.
To hang it my husband drilled some hooks on the fireplace crown molding and used a sort of invisible wire (That is not actually invisible) that could hold the weight up without any issue.
After we hung the board and the globes we felt like it din't pop like I was expecting it to. I had this feeling like "Something is missing". So I decided to buy something shiny that would give it the dimension that we were looking for.
I bought a 10 yard ribbon of rhinestone and decided to stick them as border. While I was using a superglue to stick that I made a blooper! In my defense I did not notice it to be "super" glue, I thought it was just another craft glue. Yes, I got it on my fingers and it was terrible to get it off. I even cried thinking its going to be permanent  and in that 20 min window and out in my frustration my mind was racing with million thoughts  - How am I ever going to get my finger prints back and they won't let me back in the country without my original finger prints!  - OK ...there is nothing to laugh about it. It can happen to anybody.
Diffusing away from the scene above, here is the end result(some pics below). Thanks to my husband once again for calming my nerves down and asking me to soak my hand in warm soapy water (and that helped).