My friend, Lesley, touched base with me several months back. She was throwing an art party for her daughter’s upcoming birthday. None of the invitations she had seen were doing anything for her so she asked me to do a custom job. I worked up several options, and here’s a sample of the invitation she chose.
The party was at a local art studio. What a fun idea! And perfect because they can get all messy and you don’t have to clean it up. Awesome.
There was painting,
and sand art.
They strung beads and enjoyed all sorts of other fabulously messy creativity. There’s the birthday girl in deep concentration over her masterpiece. (Either of mine would be sticking their tongues out just so. It’s a genetic marker on my dad’s side.)
Drumroooooolllllll please…
Magnificent! And speaking of which, what a super colorful spread! I love the use of different colored solid plates for this.
Check out this artful display of cupcakes!
Can you stand it? She used an assortment of these tilt-a-whirl baking cups. So festive!
I love these super colorful homemade crayons too. Lesley said she and her sister did this a lot as kids. My mom was pretty stinkin’ crafty, but we never did this that I recall. The only thing I was melting crayons into was the floor mat of our car.
I hope some of theoe cutie crayons were included in the party favor pails. Take a look. What else but paint buckets?
Man, oh man. Look at all that good arty loot. And how about these sweet favor tags? Paint swatches. Love it!
And finally, here are the thank you notes I did for them.
Looks like much fun was had at Ella’s 6th birthday party! What a cute party theme too. I love the idea of getting back to basic fun with art! Thanks to Lesley for letting us share in the fun.
I have a few more Easter goodies to share today. Yep, I finally got them all done. First up are these cutie cute cute suckers.
This is actually two suckers in one. What looks like a design on the front is actually a whole separate sucker. They came with coordinating ribbons, which I wouldn’t have picked but they were already there, and I’m not about reinventing the wheel. OK, sometimes I’m about that, but not today.
I added some Pink Peppermint gift tags, and they turned out pretty sweet. This one says, “Here’s a treat for somebunny sweet!” I also thought about using the “I’m a SUCKER for a friend like you” line from my Valentine’s post.
I also came across these adorable little gumball machines complete with gingham ribbon, which I thought were just too festive to pass up! Can you stand it?
My WalMart had both these and the suckers above along with some other festive things each in pink, green, yellow or blue–and all for under $1.50. That being said, I’ve had two friends go in search of these and come up empty handed, but I have to believe they were distributed to some stores other than my own. Here’s a close up of the tag. It reads “Have a hippity hoppin’ bubble poppin’ Easter!” It would be easy enough to replace the gumballs with small jellybeans for younger kids. My two have been eyeing these for weeks just desperate to get their hands on them!
And finally an update on the birdie brownies shown below…
After some initial problems with the brownies sticking to the muffin tin, I had great results this time using a Pillsbury Fudge brownie mix with silicon baking cups and baking spray with flour in it. Those things popped right out. Whew! I filled the cups 2/3 full and baked for about 23 minutes. They came out a bit underdone but they continued to cook for a bit longer once removed and are delish!
Watch out! That one looks like it’s about to hatch. The only reason my children are napping today is because they want to help me decorate these later. [Insert wicked laugh here.]
I’ve got quite a few to share with you, but the kids are out this week and time is scarce, so I’ve decided to share these as they are ready. First up are these sweet little brownie cups. I first shared these on my Facebook page, and I got so many comments that I thought I’d repost them here.
This is a great project to do with preschoolers or older kiddos. My son and I made these together. We made brownies in muffin tins. I made the mistake of baking them in paper cups. They stuck SO badly even after I had sprayed them. Then, another friend had the same problem using just a greased muffin tin with no paper. I have heard that the fudgie brownies turn out better as muffins than the more cakelike ones. Anyhoo, if you know what we are doing wrong, please do share a comment! Or just make miniatures with the store bought brownie bites.
We shaped the edible Easter grass (Target, World Market) like birds’ nests. Then, we piped a bit of chocolate icing on top to give the nests something to hold onto. Those are Cadbury mini chocolate eggs placed in the center. Yum!
Here’s another sweet treat that we made last year. I thought they turned out so cute that we decided to try them again for my daughter’s classroom goodies this year!
There are lots of places online where you can find cone-shaped bags. Sometimes they are in quantities of 100, but really they are cents each and you can use them up within a year or two or go in with a friend and make these together. I have also seen them locally at Hobby Lobby. The beauty of these cone bags is that you can make the treats as big or as small as you like by just lopping the excess off the top of the bag. Here, I used those tiny rubber ponytail holders for little girls to close the bags. I pulled apart some raffia for the green attached to each carrot and used one of my personalized bunny tags complete with a cottontail. I think they turned out super sweet. Hope you agree!
