Skylanders Party Planning - Part 7, THE PARTY!

At long last – I present to you... the summary of our Skylanders party. 

Yes, it has been over two months since said party took place, but better late than never, eh?

The activities went over really well.  The kids loved moving from station to station and acquiring crystals and gems to fill their customized pouches (tutorials on how to sew them and stencil them with fabric paint here).

The archery targets looked great and the flame arrows were really fun as well. 

Next time I would trim the flames down a bit to make it easier to nock the arrows.

The treasure hunt to find the treasure rocks went well.  And I was really pleased with how the treasure rocks turned out.  I used this tutorial:  Treasure Rocks.

The kids loved the ice orb smash and the tongue grabber game.

The wall of streamers was meh.  I ran out of time and wasn't able to put up as much as I wanted.  If it had been finished, I think it would have been fab.  Even incomplete, it added a nice pop to the yard.

I was very pleased with the rest of the décor. 

Streamers behind the food table provided a colorful focal point.

I was happy with my goofy centerpieces.  I used my elixir bottles and filled them with colorful beads for ballast.

I have to say that tissue tassels are definitely my new favorite thing.  After the party, I snipped the tassels off of the string, sorted by color, strung them on pipe cleaners, and hung them in the craft room to use for another time.

Sadly, the portal punch was a fail – I forgot that the pumpkin lights really only work in the dark.  Boo.  But the punch was good and the portal cardboard surround I made had a strong presence on the table.

We had too much food, as usual, but I don’t care – I love having the variety available.  Pizza, chips, water melon, and pineapple for lunch. 

The sweets table turned out really well, although we did end up moving it indoors to escape the oppressive humidity and voracious mosquitoes.  We made marshmallow pops dipped in pop rocks.  I displayed them in a diner-style shaker filled with pom-poms.

We also had chocolate dipped pretzels, a mini-cake with a simple buttercream stripe pattern topped with the logo on strwas, cupcakes with character and logo toppers, and my personal favorite - the Chompie Truffles.  I thought the red fangs made from candy cane jimmies (sorry – showing my Delaware roots – jimmies are sprinkles) were fun.

I was also excited to serve pre-scooped ice cream.  I bought mini-mason jars and put a scoop of vanilla bean in each the night before.  It was so easy to pull them out and stack them up on the sweets table.  I have a thing about sticky hands and drippy sticky containers, so I will be doing this from now on.  This little step easily reduced my stress level by several clicks.

For favors, we gave out silver take-out treat boxes.

They were filled with the same red and gold cello used for the flame arrows, which was very frugal of me, I think.

Inside we put:
Trigger Happy Chocolate Coins

Double Trouble Gumball Orbs (still leftover from Easter - will we never be done with these freaking gumballs?!?)

 Pop Fizz Pop Rocks (Dollar Tree)

 Zap's Sea Slime (Target Dollar Section)

 And Hex's Bone Erasers (no pic of those, unfortunately.  They were in the Target Dollar section with the grilling-themed stuff.)

Glittery Initials

For my daughter's joint-birthday-rock-climbing-party, I thought that it might be fun to have an initial for each birthday girl to place near her cake on the cake table.  In addition to being a fun design element, it would allow for guests to know which cake is for which birthday girl, provide another opportunity to bring in the party palette of blues and greens (the fave colors of each birthday girl), and would later do double duty as bedroom decor and a fun memento of the event for each girl.

For this project, because I wanted the letters to be free-standing and not too big, I searched high and low for just the right kind.  I went to A.C. Moore and Michael's, but was underwhelmed by their options.  Most of their letters seem meant to grace a wreath or hang on a wall, not stand independently.  I trudged off to Joann's as a last resort and was THRILLED to see that they have a HUGE selection of letters, both hanging and standing styles, in a variety of materials, fonts, and sizes.  I found the perfect sized 3-dimensional cardboard letters for each girl and the price was great as well - with a coupon for one, I ended up paying less than $4 total.

Back at home, prep work involved removing tags and stickers from the letters and then assembling a variety of blue and green acrylic paints from my collection.  I painted each letter using lots of different shades for depth.  I painted all sides of the letters just to be safe.

While the letters dried, I used my paint plate to experiment with glitter and sequins to figure out which route I wanted to take for embellishments.  Sequins were just too much, so scratch that.  I then tried aqua glitter thinking that it would accent both the blue and green hues and bring a little unity to each letter while still letting them be different.  It was OK, but not exactly right.  Whitish-clear glitter didn't have enough oomph.  The blue iridescent flake glitter was the CLEAR winner.  It picked up and enhanced the best of the green and the blue for both hues.  My mama always taught me that you can never go wrong with iridescence and she is right every time!

After drying - I gave them overnight, but they were dry much sooner - each letter received a coat of glossy mod podge and a liberal sprinkling of that gorgeous, flaky iridescent glitter.  I let that sit for a bit and then came the top coat of glossy mod podge to seal the glitter in.  (Nothing worse than errant glitter floating about the house.)  I probably should have let the 1st coat of mod podge sit overnight - while applying the top coat, I did end up shifting a lot of the flake glitter around.  If I do it again, I'll wait longer for the glitter to set.

(Mog podge is not fully dry here - those white streaks are gone in the finished project...)

Skylanders Party Planning - Part 3, Flameslinger Archery Targets

I'm plugging along on the Skylanders party - now three months away.  I try to do a little bit every week in the hopes that I won't be crazed and overwhelmed in July.  My latest accomplishment was finishing the archery targets for the Flameslinger Archery Game that I mentioned in the 1st party post:  Skylanders Part 1

I was initially thinking that I'd just alternate red and white like a regaular target, but then I realized that these targets present a great opportunity to bring in some more of the party color pallette of purple, orange, lime, teal, and aqua.  I love having elements at a party do double-duty and here's a great example - games also serving as decor.

I plan to suspend these targets from trees in our yard - will punch holes on either side and thread fishing line through - holes on each side will keep them from spinning... I hope.  I love how bright and colorful they are!