Mermaid Birthday Party!

I had the most amazing time working with my best friend and future daughter-in-law to create an underwater adventure for my daughter, who turned 9 this year!  I am always very teary-eyed when I see just how much my babies have grown each year, but this year especially has been tough as she is starting on her journey out of the babyface. With each picture I take of her, I notice that she is getting older and older.  So, for as long as she will let me, I will make her birthday parties memorable! This year, the theme is Mermaids. She chose this theme because we will be building her a room of her own and she wants it to be all mermaids. So she asked her friends and family for mermaid decor and art supplies, and boy did they deliver! So, let’s dive into this adventure together.

THE INVITATIONS

We searched everywhere for invitations that would live up to the standards she was searching for with this party. After searching high and low, we came across these blank cards with a shimmery cover that we both felt looked like mermaid scales. We then let our imagination move forward when she found this sparkling teal washi tape. But we weren’t done yet, we looked in the duct tape section and found the colors she had been looking for and in the design, she was looking for.  I had no clue how all of this was going to come together, but as soon as we got home, we started brainstorming.

The first thing we did was add a strip of the mermaid scale duct tape to the inside of the card. The thing we noticed when we did this was the natural feel of duct tape with the pattern we chose, made the entire scales come to life and feel realistic as you slid your fingers across it. We then decided to write “You are invited!” on the sparkled teal washi tape. The one thing I will say is that none of my fineliners would work on this tape, I’m not sure if it was because of the texture on it or what the deal was, but the only thing I could get to write on it was a bullet tip sharpie.

I then let her choose from a large number of colors for the actual information text on the invitation. She chose this beautiful shade of purple that really just made the invitation perfect. We ended up making 30 of these and giving them out to all her classmates and her other friends.

THE DECORATIONS

Typically I go all out on the decorations, but I didn’t get that far this time. I hung up a Happy Birthday banner that I had already saved from a previous birthday celebration. I also had many balloons. I hung outside on our lamp posts for people to know where the party was and then bouquets over the gift table, the food table, the adult table and the craft table. Other than that, there were some loose balloons around for the kids to play with.

We searched everywhere for mermaid stuff and we couldn’t find it anywhere. The few decorations I did find, I ordered off Amazon, I had a tablecloth, plates, napkins, and a centerpiece. There wasn’t much but we accomplished a lot with the little we had mixed with what I had left over from previous parties.

THE FOOD

Let’s start out with the basic essentials that I didn’t put much effort into at all. There was, as always, a fruit tray, a veggie tray, two types of chips, sugar cookies, and hotdogs. Those were straight out of the packaging food I offered. Typically, I overdo it with food, but I had no leftovers at the end of this party, so I am glad that I did offer so much. Now onto the things I did work hard on.

Chocolate Covered Pretzel Rods

These were so super yummy and a huge hit. I grabbed two bags of pretzel rods from the store and I also purchased CadiQuik chocolate. After heating the chocolate I started to dip the pretzels into the chocolate, white and milk chocolate, and then laid them out on wax paper to harden before I decorated them with colorful candy melts. I highly recommend getting the candy melt squeeze bottles, it made these projects so much more smooth.

Cream Cheese Clam Cookies

These cookies were so yummy and quite easy to make. First off I made the home-made cream cheese icing which consists of two sticks of butter, three 8oz packages of cream cheese and 6 cups of powdered sugar. Let me just tell you, this icing was a hit and I’m really happy that I learned an easy way to make it because we ran out of icing for the last few cupcakes and improvised with this icing.

The assembly is quite easy. Lay down a vanilla wafer, squeeze on a layer of icing, close it with another vanilla wafer and push in a Sixlet pearl on one side. They turned out amazing and were a big hit as well.

THE (CUP)CAKE

The cake, or in this case, the cupcakes are always a huge deal for me. You can read about why I prefer cupcakes over cake here. I wrote about it on my mom blog if you’re interested. Moving on. Yellow cake and chocolate (some cream cheese) icing. The most interesting thing about these cupcakes is the candy melt mermaid tales that were sitting on top of them.

As you can tell, they came out amazing. I was actually surprised at how easy they were to make. I had purchased some silicone molds from Amazon that came in a 4 pack to include two smaller and two larger molds. In total, I had 41 cupcakes to decorate. We decided early on that with only four molds, it would take us all night to get all the tales made, so we would only do 20 tales and leave the other half of the cupcakes decorated with sprinkles and candy pearls.

Using the squeeze bottles I mentioned above, we squeezed the candy melts into the molds and let them sit in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to harden. We then popped them out of the mold by folding the mold backward which allowed the tale to slide out without a breaking.

After all the tails were done, we decided that dusting them with edible glitter would just make them look so much more realistic, and it didn’t take barely any to make them shine. We wanted to make sure that each tail was different from another so we started to have fun mixing colors and designs as well.

THE ENTERTAINMENT AND CRAFTS

As far as entertainment is concerned, we allowed the kids to go outside and play until their little hearts were content. After presents and cake though, we started on a painting project. The kids were all excited because they could have something to take home. I purchased a six-pack of plaster underwater sea creatures for each kid to choose and decorate. I had paints and glitter glue as well so that they could personalize them completely.

These pictures are of my toddlers’ painting, they had a blast and I really enjoyed that this project was fine for kids of all ages. Once they were done, I placed each piece in a plastic cup for them to take home so that they would have the chance to dry and not get messed up along the way.

Overall, the party lasted about two hours and everyone had a great time. This is a theme that I can see myself doing again in the future for sure, but we will have to see what comes my way. I love the challenge that my kids present to me when they decide the theme of the party because I love the look on their face when I achieve their dreams with creativity.

I would love to know what your favorite part of this party was in the comments below. If you would like more details on anything you see in this post, please don’t hesitate to ask me and I will create more of a tutorial for you.

2017 Year in Review

Happy New Year!

I want to create a special post that sorta sums up my year for 2017. You know that although I had been blogging since 2016, I only got my own website in 2017. Boy have I been blessed with this outlet to share my creativity and inspire others to do something creative every day.  There are several things that I am going to discuss, to include my subscription to Sketchbox, My first Mandala Collection, Christmas Gifts I created and my favorite creations of the year. So grab your cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and lets get started!

SketchBox

For those of you that don’t know, Sketchbox is a monthly subscription box for artists to try out different mediums. I have really been excited by everything that I have been able to create using the products I have received through these boxes. Some of my favorite products include a watercolor sketchbook, a full sepia Copic fineliner set, and last but not least watercolor pencils, this is only to name a few. If you would like to go back and review my unboxing posts you can visit them by clicking on the links below.

May  

June

JulyJuly Grab box  

August

September

October

 November

December

Mandala Collection I

For me, this was a huge accomplishment.  I wanted to start a collection of the mandala that was similar and yet different at the same time. For this collection, I chose to draw my mandala on gradient paper with black fineliners and a white gel pen. I was so happy how each one came out so different than the ones before.  Prints of these will be available in my shop once I get it all online. Stay tuned for this special collection. Each one of these mandalas are so special to me. I wrote a different post for each one, which you can visit below:

Mandala #1

Mandala #2

Mandala #3

Mandala #4

Mandala #5

Personalized Gifts

One of my favorite things to do is create something beautiful and personal for my friends, family, and co-workers. I truly enjoy the look on their face when they realize it is not only an original, but there are no others like it in the world. I want to share these few gifts with you.

Personalized Parties

Every birthday that happens in my house is a reason to celebrate. With the birthdays spread throughout the year, we are able to party all year long! Starting in February with my two from my previous marriage celebrating, then moving to my youngest two in June, oldest two in July and 3rd oldest in November. Mix that in with all the holidays and we rarely don’t have a reason to bust out some exciting party decorations. But also, because we have so many celebrations, It’s important that we get creative with them all, most of the decorations were homemade. Check out the following posts about my under the sea themed party for my youngest two.

Under the Sea

Octopus Guard

Sea Sponges

Jellyfish Mood Lighting

Furniture Painting

The absolute highlight of my year was creating a beautiful work of art for my mother. She brought this table to me and gave me no restrictions other than she wanted a Charity Original painted on top. Painted?! I’ve never painted anything detailed like the creations I have made.  Check out how this table progressed by clicking on the links below:

Scallopped Table #1

Scallopped Table #2

There are several other projects that I completed this year for Christmas Gifts to include a 12×12 personalized mandala painting on canvas, a monogrammed lazy susan and a phoenix staff for my best guy friend. All of these projects were special in their own ways and were hard to keep a secret for as long as I could since I love to share my progress pictures with the special people that received these gifts.

My Favorites of the Year

 

Final Thoughts

I do want to send out a special thank you for all of you that have supported me this year. I couldn’t have done this without you cheering me on. Special thanks to my fiance’ who has stuck by my side while I have spent the long hours trying to make something out of nothing. I love each and every one of you and I can only hope that in 2018, we will see a lot more growth from CraftyArtistKC. Help me make this year a good one by sharing my site with your friends family and social media accounts. I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Let me know in the comments below, what was your favorite project or post from this year!

Octopus Lollipops

The materials you will need for this project are:

  • Tootsie Roll Lollipops
  • Tissue Paper
  • Assorted Colored Pipe Cleaners
  • Googly eyes, or eye stickers
  • Stickers

(Optional) Items you need for the display stand:

  • Styrofoam Cone
  • Craft Spray Paint – Be sure to get the type that states that it is safe for crafty foams.

 

The first step for this is to cut out the tissue paper into little squares. You want the square to be big enough to cover the lollipop and be able to twist beneath it on the stick. The second thing I would suggest is to cut each of the pipe cleaners in half. You should be able to do this with regular scissors.

Put the lollipop in the middle of the square and fold the ends down around  and down to the stick. Then take the pipe cleaners and wrap 4 pipe cleaners around the stick so that the two ends are roughly the same size. Then twist each pipe cleaner end to imitate tentacles.  The final step is to attach the eyes to the top of the lollipop.

Now I had a dilemma where I need to display them somehow. I saw a pinterest photo but it wasn’t linked to any tutorial or blog, so I decided to try it. I purchased a styrofoam cone and spray painted it blue. After it dried I stuck each of the sticks into the foam in no particular order or arrangement. I just placed it high enough on the cone that the stick wouldn’t break through the bottom.

I would love to know your thoughts on this project in the comments below. I would also love to know if you have ever tried this project yourself and I would invite you to link the results as well.

Fish School Birthday Banner

The birthday banner, in my opinion, is one of the most fun things to create for my kids birthday parties. I love to make it themed and personalized. Every year I create a new banner, but this year’s was too adorable.

What you need for this craft:

  • Pre-cut paper fish shapes.
  • Alphabet Stickers

For the alphabet stickers, I went to hobby lobby and found white glitter letters. They were all lowercase which I felt added a sort of whimsical and childish effect that I was wanting.  Please be sure to plan out what you want the letters to spell out when you choose the stickers. Maybe you need four a’s and only three come in the package, which means you would need two packages of stickers.

I enlisted the help of my daughter, who was all too excited about this project. I love that she is to the age where she is appreciative of the time and energy it takes to complete creative projects. She is such a huge help. I asked her to hand each letter to me in the order that I needed it and I stuck it to the fish shape. I needed almost all the fish and there was no room for trial and error.

 

I loved how happy each fish seemed to be to carry out this task. I had thought of several ways to keep this banner together. One of my ideas was to get a thin rope and string it through the eyes of the fish to make it seem like they were caught. But the more I thought of that idea, the more I thought how morbid that would be for a toddler’s party. So my second thought was to make it a school of fish. So I draped rolled plastic table cloths across my walls and then attached to fish to the table cloth with tape.  I did not tape the fish to each other, each one was independent of the others.  The way I decided to place them so it would be centered was to start with the center fish on the two phrases and work out from those centered letters. Once I added the other underwater creatures, I was amazed with how the banner turned out!

I would love to know your thoughts on this project. Let me know in the comments below. If you try out any of these projects, I would love to see, so shoot me an email or link them in the comments below!

Mickey/Minnie Birthday Party

Ok. Here are some of the crafts that I decided to do for my kids birthday. Madison and miles are a year apart. So they will almost always have a combined party. I do not feel bad for them because my sister and I are a year apart and we always had our parties together. Now we live in different states and I only wish I could celebrate with her yearly. Let me apologize as this is a media heavy post.

Ok. In the picture above, I made the names banner using ribbon, cardstock, alphabet stickers and a double line punch. The double line punch was to make slits in the cardstock so I could run the ribbon through. Honestly, I did this the morning of the party. I like the way it turned out and because it is multi colored, I am able to change out the ribbon with the birthday theme. Yay!

 

For my front door, I made these adorable outlines using my circle cutter. I printed the words out on construction paper, then cut the circles out. I printed Minnie’s bow out on construction paper as well and just cut it out with scissors. Although I worked hard on this and everyone complimented me, I had a few tips to make them better. First off, I would suggest that you use cardstock instead of construction paper, as it will hold up better and the colors are brighter. Secondly, dress up the lettering with some outlines or doodles.

Oh yes, the cupcakes. I decided a long time ago that cupcakes are a better option than cake at a party, and it’s easy to send guests home with the extras. For these cupcakes, I bought red and white, and pink and white polka dot cupcake liners. I baked over 25 chocolate cupcakes and 25 strawberry cupcakes. The decorations were pretty easy. I used chocolate icing in the can to make things quick and easy. I then bought candy bows from the bakery section at Wal-mart. The ears are just mini Oreos, which proved more difficult to find. I finally found them at Target. Putting these together put a huge smile on my face. I loved every minute of it.

As you can tell, the cupcakes were a huge success and worked well for miles first-year smash cake. I got many chocolate kisses during this time as we all huddled around him watching his delight as he was allowed to get messy.

Onto the photo booth. My amazing boyfriend made this photo booth frame so that I could decorate it. I used a red plastic table cloth, cardstock, black foam board, alphabet stickers, and black poster board. I think it turned out great and we had a lot of fun using the mickey mouse club photo props I purchase online. For Mickey’s hands, I printed out the design on regular paper and backed it with poster board so that it would hold up.

Here is just a close up of the sliding glass door leading to the back yard where the photo booth was set up. I just used window paint for this. My 7 yr old helped out too. It was a bonding experience for us both!

I also used styrofoam balls from the craft store with wooden dowels to support them in the traditional Mickey mouse shape and filled them with dum dum suckers.  This took well over 1000 suckers just in case anyone out there wants to attempt this. But I like the way it turned out.

All in all, it was a fun party with family and friends.  What was your favorite part of the party? Let me know in the comments below!