Skylanders Party Planning - Part 5, Mod-Podge Woes, Faux Leather Treasure Chest, Neon Balls, and a Portal Punch Possibility

I'm chunking through my Skylanders Party to-do list - whoo hoo!  The party isn't until July, but we have big vacation out West planned for June, so I'm trying to be proactive.  Next up...

Treasure Chest
This chest was a thrift store find.  It was originally cream with grapevines and a bit of a crackle finish.  I just attacked it with some brown spray paint. 

I LOVE that the crackle finish is still visible but now looks like textured, pebbly leather.  I will pretend that I knew all along that this was how to make spray paint look like leather.  It will be our little secret.  Kay?

Next step is to rub the nail heads and clasp with some dull gold glaze.  Once done, this will hold the party favors and the kids will need to do a treasure hunt to find it.  I all ready wrote and printed the clues.  Sample clue:  Find your way to a very tall tree, around the trunk you'll find clue #3. 

I wrote all the clues in verse 

could anything be worse?

Than someone who thinks she's a poet

and doesn't really know it

that she's not?

For the Wrecking Ball Tongue Grab Magic Element Challenge, I found 2 large flat platters at the Dollar Tree.  I thought that these would work to hold the gems to be grabbed and the shallowness of the lip wouldn't interfere with the game.

To make them more fun, I mod-podged on pictures of Wrecking Ball with 2 different catchphrases. 

I'm having a lot of trouble with my mod-podge lately - lots of wrinkling.  I think that I need to switch to card stock instead of regular copy paper.  So be forewarned - these are not perfect.  I just have to accept this with a sigh and move on.

For Trigger Happy's Coin Toss Tech Element Challenge, I found some red and gold bins at Dollar Tree and hit them with some mod-podge as well.

Wrinkled again!  Doh!  The kids won't mind, right?

And finally, I modified and gussied up the Dollar Tree boomerangs originally shown here with some brown paint and mod-podge.  You can see one in the front here:

Meh.  Not my best work.  But I think that the kids will get a kick out of these more so than a plain old tray, bin, or boomerang.  Note that the boomerangs are meant to fly with a helicopter attached, but the kids tested them and they work just as well sans copter.

While I had the drop cloth out for the treasure chest, I also took some time to paint some foam balls found at Dollar Tree (again with the Dollar Tree!).  The idea is to use my frosted glass bottles and make funky centerpieces.  I used bright green, orange, aqua, and purple to turn these plain balls into...

...these bright balls.  Aren't they fun?

I might do this again and make a wreath - I love how colorful they are.

And finally, at a store you might have heard of called Dollar Tree, I found this little foam ring, which doesn't look like much, but will hopefully work for my vision of a Portal Punch. 

The color changing pumpkin light fits PERFECTLY in the middle and my punch bowl will be supported on top.  If this works, if will be fabulous!

Skylanders Party Planning - Part 4, Mod-Podged Shields and Elixir Bottles

One advantage to having a late, freezing-cold spring like this one is that I haven't been distracted by nice weather and have instead been holed up in the craft room, diligently working on projects for upcoming parties.  Here are the latest projects for the Skylanders party... gussied up Dollar Tree Frisbees for the Undead element challeng and the 1st step to transform Orangina bottles into Healing Elixir bottle centerpieces.

Chop-Chop's Shields
As mentioned in this post, I bought some blue Frisbees with plans to turn them into "shields" for the Undead element challenge.  Chop-Chop has a shield that he flings at his enemies - at the party, the guests will fling the Frisbees at an as-yet-to-be-determined target and hopefully not at each other.  Anyhoo, I found an image of Chop-Chop that I modified in Photoshop Elements.  (I subtracted the background - that is all that I know how to do in Photoshop.  Pathetic, I know.)  I then pasted the image into PowerPoint, fiddled with the size a bit, and printed on cardstock.  Traced a circle with a cereal bowl, cut it out, and got out the mod-podge.  This is how it looked just after mod-podging.

This always happens with mod-podge and I always get panicky ("OMG - this looks terrible!  I've ruined it!"), which is silly, because it always ends up fine.  The Frisbees ended up looking like this...

Perfect and beautiful.  Thank you, mod-podge.  I am pleased.  I will work on my panic issues.

Elixir Bottle Transformation, Step 1
As mentioned here, I was originally going to fill the Orangina bottles with blue fluid and serve them as drinks.

This was before I served said Orangina at my egg hunt and nearly everyone took a bottle home with them.  I thought about starting over and buying more, but Orangina is kind of expensive and, let's be honest here, I really don't need those calories, soooo I modified my approach.  Instead of serving drinks, the 4 bottles that didn't walk will become centerpieces.  I plan to fill them with a funky arrangement of colorful balls on pipe cleaner stems (more on that later).  For the 1st step - turning the bottle blue - I found a cool idea on Pinterest to use diluted glue and food coloring "paint" to make glass look like sea glass.  Note, this treatment will not be waterproof!  It was, however, very easy.

Place 1 part glue and 1 part water in a small cup.  You don't need a lot.  Add liquid food coloring until desired shade is achieved.  Mix well with a paint brush that you won't mind throwing away.  Using the paint brush to paint on an even coat of the glue mixture.  It will look a little blotchy, but don't panic - it will dry to a nice even frosted look.

Love it!  Next step is to make a label that looks like an Ankh for each one.  Photoshop, here I come.  In about 10 hours, I should have figured out how to make a label.  Hopefully.  Probably not, though.  (Seriously, am I an idiot?  Is Photoshop hard for anyone else?)

Egg Hunt: Food

Our first neighborhood egg hunt was very successful despite the snow.  (Our apologies to the kid looking for the white eggs.  Oops.)  We got lots of compliments on the idea and how it brought everyone together to spend time with one another and chat.  I've always wanted to live in one of those neighborhoods where people hang out together all the time.  This isn't that neighborhood YET, but I've realized that I can help to make it happen if I want to.  Be the change you want to see in your neighborhood, one party at a time.  That's a direct quote from Gandhi, people.*

*OK, maybe I tweaked it a bit, but I think that Gandhi would have loved a good block party.

Anyhoo, here's what I made...  and please disregard the unsightly siding on my house.  Superstorm Sandy did a number on it and it's been too cold to repaint.  We are getting vinyl this summer, hopefully!

FOOD

This was so much fun and I was very proud of my little economies.  I tried to get variety by using some of the same ingredients in different ways.  For example...

... I used one box of cake mix to make both cupcakes and cake pops.  Cupcakes are topped with homemade buttercream (you can make a delicious ton with just 2 sticks of butter, some powdered sugar, and a splash of milk - it's super easy and you will get mad props from your peeps for making homemade frosting) and both cakes and pops use sprinkles from the dollar section at Target.  Link to printables is posted below.

... and I used a bag of Oreos to make both Oreo truffles and Oreo pops, also topped with $1 sprinkles.

I love them on the bed of Easter M&M's - so colorful and who doesn't love edible decor?  By the way, the glass tray was a thrift store find for $2.00.  It's actually a candle plate.  I bought it because it's very shallow and therefore wouldn't require a ton of filler. 

I used my old standby of marshmallows to fill things out a bit for a buck.

Plus I found a bag of cotton candy at the Dollar Tree and that filled a bowl nicely, also for a buck.  Incidentally, the candy jar here and the fishbowl holding the Bunny Tails are also thrift store finds.

I wanted some height and whimsy and more peeps, so I skewered some chicks on kebab sticks mounted in a styrofoam ball.  Iridescent Easter grass from the Dollar Tree was a great, cheap bucket filler.  I added height with a sturdy box covered in Dollar Tree wrapping paper and a sheet of scrapbooking paper.

I wanted to mix it up and have some things that weren't too sweet as well.  Baked Cheetos and Veggie Straws fit the bill and went over well.  I lined the basket and tin with waxed paper to 1) avoid grease stains on the cloth basket liner and 2) ensure that nothing harmful leached from the tin into the food since I wasn't absolutely certain if it was food-safe.

My most time-intensive treat was my parfaits in a jar.  I loved the spoons tied to the jar with the same yarn used for the pennants.  It was very practical because I didn't have to put out a separate container for utensils.  Check out this post for details on how I made this treat:  Parfaits in a Jar  They were a big hit.  I did notice that people were taking them home rather than eating them there, so if you make them yourself, be prepared to bid your jars adieu.  The cake pedestal that holds them was an after-Easter-sale purchase at Target a few years ago.

For drinks, a big jug of water and a tin bucket full of Orangina.  And a pretty jar of colorful straws.  I know that plastic straws are soooo passe, but I like the vibrancy of the colors here.  And I liked the price as well - $1 at Target.

I used a great set of free printables found on Catch My Party, designed by Autumn Leah Designs for the cupcake toppers and food signs:  Chick Printables

The "Keep Calm and Peep On" free printable was found here:  Peep On  It wasn't quite 8x10, so I trimmed it and mounted on cardstock to fill it out.  I popped the whole thing into a frame from Ollie's.  I use this frame for a rotating series of seasonal art.

Skylanders Party Planning - Part 2, Elixir Inspiration, Portal Punch, and Archery Targets (in progress)

The planning continues for the Skylanders Party, albeit slooooowly.  (My attention has been focused on our upcoming neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt.  More on that later...)  But I have had some cool finds and ideas that I'd like to share.  Firstly, while enjoying a nice bottle of Orangina, it occurred to me...

 ...that an Orangina bottle sure does look a lot like the Healing Elixir bottles found in the game.

Emptied of Orangina, labels removed, and filled with blue liquid (dyed water, Kool Aid?  Do kids still drink Kool Aid these days?  Will I be shunned by the other mothers for serving dyed sugar water?) with an ankh sticker slapped on the front - this is going to look amazing!  It will be a sacrifice to have to drink 16 bottles of delicious, sweet Organina, but I will do it.  Because I love my son THAT much.  Hold your applause.

Next, my son recently accumulated enough stars for good behavior to earn Spyro's Adventure.  While looking at the Portal of Power in action, I realized that it cycles through different colors...

...which you can NOT see in this picture, but trust me.  It does.  You know what else cycles through different colors AND we have at least 4 of in our basement?  The color-changing lights we put in our Halloween pumpkins.

Color Changing Pumpkin Light

I'm going to try to mount my punch bowl over the pumpkin light and have the colors illuminate the punch.  I'm thinking that a sherbet punch might be the right mix of cloudy and translucent and will allow the light to shine through in the same milky, mystical manner as the portal.  I will also try to fashion a cardboard surround painted to look like the portal and wrap the whole contraption.

I also started construction on some archery targets.  I found huge sheets of cardboard at BJ's (they put out little boxes all the time, but they do have big sheets of cardboard in the back - just ask) and did the pushpin-with-string-tied-to-a-pencil trick to get nice big concentric circles.  I have 4 cut out and will start painting soon.

It doesn't look like much YET, but wait until I paint it!  Then it will have STRIPES!  In ALTERNATING COLORS!!  Boom.  Amazing.  (OK, fine.  It will be like any other archery target you've ever seen, but I worked so hard cutting 4 of these bad boys out that I felt they deserved a mention...  and...  OK, fine.  So I only cut out 2 and I made my husband cut out the rest.  But in my defense, it was REALLY HARD cardboard.  BJ's cardboard is legit.  It don't play.)