Special Feature - Birthday Party - by BethD488

When Amber asked for a special feature for April, I immediately put my hand up and started jumping up and down, saying "Me, Me, ME!!!"  Well, I jumped on my keyboard and said, "yes, pick me!!!"  Anyway, you get the picture.  The reason I did that was because I had a huge weekend planned as my DS's birthday was the day before Easter, and I had birthday stuff I was going to make anyway.  It was a perfect way to show some of the other projects I was working on (since I rarely have the time to upload pics and put them on the chat board - sorry).

Every year, I give my kids a themed birthday party.  As soon as they are able age-wise, I let them pick what that theme is.  This year, we got a Wii for Christmas and one of the games is the New Super Mario Brothers, so ever since, he's been obsessed with Mario.  Well, guess what he picked as the theme this year - you got it Super Mario Brothers.  Now, of course with my luck, I don't really have an interest in the game, so I had to do some research and some cramming about the characters.  While doing so, I found some pictures about party ideas.  So onto the projects I ended up doing (most of which are SMB related).

Invites:

I found an fairly easy invite that is different from what I usually do, and I altered it slightly.  It features the UP toadstool on SMB.  I made a pocket, and then made the toadstool and inserted into the pocket.  The invite information is on the toadstool bottom, and you have to pull it up to read it.  I also added the bonus star to it.

The CC products I used were:  EP Little Boy - Red Plaid back (green polka dots), Buttons back (orange check), Cool Stripe back (blue dots), Road Map back (brown check); MM small gold circle brads; Mm emtro mini shimmer gold alpha; Slice and Design Card Summer - star.

Non CC products are: SU yellow, ballet blue, pumpkin pie, ruby red cardstock; Recollections cream cardstock; 1inch circle punch; uni-ball white pen.

Favor Bags:

Instead of buying SMB themed bags or boxes for favors, I decided to make some very simple ones.  I bought some gift bags from AC Moore and added stars and border strips.  The tag says "Just for U, Thanks for Coming".

CC products (bags):  EP Little Boy (green polka dots, orange check, buttons, blue dots, brown check, vroom back - yellow stripe).

CC products (tag): EP Little Boy - In the Clouds; MM metro mini shimmer gold alpha, The Twinery Maraschino Cherry twine.

Non-CC products (bags): SU scallop punch, SU star punch, Recollections primary cardstock, SU wild wasabi cardstock, gift bags.

Non-CC products (tag): 3inch scallop circle punch; 2.5inch circle punch; SU star punch.

Cupcake decoration:

The tag I used for the cupcake is very similar to the tag on the favor bags.  The back has a picture of Mario on it.

Centerpiece:

One of the catalogs I usually use for birthday party supplies had an SMB theme package.  In it was a centerpiece that looked fairly simple, so I decided to make it myself.  It was basically a box that had the question mark and star on it with Mario and Luigi jumping out of it.  I simply found a box, covered it with four different patterned papers, and then found a picture of M and L and adhered it to a sun-like piece of cardstock to make it look like they were popping out of the box.  This now sits in my DS's room he liked it so much.

CC products: EP Little Boy - awesome dots and boxer strip backs; Slice.

Non-CC products: Mario Bros pic from web; Recollections primary cardstock; SU yellow cardstock; Slice Design Card - sports.

Birthday Card:

My DS is in first grade, and he is doing really well in school, but the best thing that happened this year was that he learned to read.  So I wanted to honor that in his card.

CC products: EP 6x6 A Boy's Life; American Craft thickers Jewelry Box.

Non-CC products:  SU blue cardstock, star punch.

Banner:

When I saw the chipboard banners CC sold a few months ago, I had the idea of making banners for each of my children that represent who they are and what they like.  For my DS's party, I hung it on over our fireplace, but it will eventually go in his room.  His interests include: trains, Cub Scouts, dinosaurs (he claims he wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up), chess, Legos, art/drawing and books, and soccer and football.  He absolutely loved this and how it represents who he is.

CC products:  FP Artist Edition chipboard banner semi-circle; EP Little Boy (green polka dots, yellow stripes, blue dots, red stripe, blue with white dots (back of journal cards), rock star and blue diamond, borders); MM mini gold circle brads; Slice and Design Card Green Thumb (Sam) and Big Kids (train, dinosaur, All Boy).

Non-CC products:  Slice Design Card Sports (soccer ball, cleat, Goal, football, Touchdown) and Fall Back to School (scissors, books, pencil, 123, ABC); Creative Imaginations Lego stickers; K&Co cub scout die-cuts; SU ruby red, pumpkin pie, wild wasabi, ballet blue cardstock; SU star punch; Recollections primary cardstock yellow; misc brown, black and white cardstock; Xyron; chess piece pics from web; and black pen to outline some of the die-cuts and give them some definition.

Then for Easter, I made some cute small decorated buckets.  I added them to our mantle and out other Easter decorations.  I used strips of paper and adhered them vertically around the bucket.  Then I cut out the work Easter and adhered it overtop.  The hardest thing was to figure out how wide to make the strips.

CC products: EP 6x6 Springtime; Slice and Design Card Spring.

Non-CC products: buckets; Xyron.

I had a lot of fun making all these projects.  It was also fun using almost all of an entire line of paper (EP Little Boy) - I'm saving the rest (and some of the matching cardstock to create the LO's of the birthday).  This was the first time I've done that.  I hope you have fun looking.