Princess/Arts & Crafts Birthday Party

I know, where have I been? Well, I had been planning & preparing for a fabulous princess/arts & crafts party! My first-born turned 5 yesterday & we celebrated with a birthday party for her last Saturday. This was the first year that she really wanted to have a party with some of her friends. And what better way to celebrate than to combine two of her favorite things-princesses & arts & crafts! What I loved about this party was that it was really easy to put together & a lot of the stuff we already had at home.

{Beware-this post is a long one!}

To start I made the invitations through Shutterfly. I had an awesome coupon code for 10 FREE cards & I needed 9 invitations so it worked out perfectly!

And they even had this darling princess crown design:

(Don't mind the smudges, I just blurred out our address & phone number!)

We were hoping for nice weather because we wanted to do the party in the backyard & it couldn't have been a more beautiful day-warm, but not too hot!

Here is how we set it up:

We used some paper from our Ikea easel & painted a birthday banner:

I just covered the ugly folding tables with some cheap plastic {pink!} tablecloths. I only wish I had something I could have covered the ugly folding chairs with, but oh well! I had bought a large generic princess coloring book (11" x 14") months ago & thought this was the perfect time to use some of those coloring pages. We put one at each seat to serve as a placemat, plus the girls could color on it while we were waiting for all of our guests to arrive. We did put a little piece of masking tape on the back of each corner to hold them in place on the tablecloth. Sometimes we get a little breeze in the afternoons. We also put some crayons in paper cups for them to use on their placemats:

A close-up of one of the spots:

We got some clothesline rope & used our staple gun to attach it to different areas of the fence & put a bunch of clothespins on it so that the girls could hang their finished paintings up to dry:

It also made for some really cute decorations when they started hanging them up there:

{Painting was, by far, the favorite activity for all of the girls & I love seeing their creativity in each painting!}

I also made each party guest an apron. This was the first craft we did. The girls colored on the apron using fabric markers (which I bought using my coupons for JoAnn's which saved $$). The fabric markers were great because they were easy for the girls to use & they dried really fast. We hung them up on some clothesline too until we were ready to use them:

I bought a pack of these canvas aprons at my local teacher supply store which was much cheaper than buying them individually. Then I used my {awesome} Silhouette machine to cut out the crowns & the names in some heat transfer vinyl which I then ironed onto the aprons. So easy & they looked really cute:

The next craft the girls did was to decorate a princess hat. I used a princess hat we already had in our dress-up bin as an example & made the princess hats out of felt, interfacing, ric rac, tulle & some elastic for the strap:

Then the girls used foam shapes & rhinestones to decorate them how they wanted. The foam shapes were adhesive & stuck really well, but we did have to use a little glue to attach the rhinestones. Luckily we had plenty of adult supervisors to help with that & it wasn't as messy as I had feared!

The next craft they did was to make some beaded necklaces. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of them doing that!

Here is the birthday girl in her decorated princess hat & apron:

{She just had so much fun!}

We also set up our easel with some sheets of paper & paint so that the girls could paint pictures whenever they wanted:

Like I said, that was probably their favorite activity! And when the paintings were dry, we rolled them up & put them in their goody baskets for them to take home.

Here are the goody baskets:

I found these cute baskets at Target in the $1 bin a while back & I knew they would be perfect to act as little artist bins for the girls to take all of their goodies home in. I was going to use my Silhouette to cut some princess crowns out of chalkboard vinyl (which is really reasonably priced through Expressions Vinyl), but then I found these already made at Michaels for super cheap! I just punched holes in them, tied them onto the baskets with some white yarn & then wrote each girl's name on it with my chalkboard markers:

My first thought for some party decorations was to do some kind of cute paper lanterns, but they are a little pricy! Much more than I had thought they would be! So I have been seeing these tissue paper pom-poms all over the internet lately & they seemed easy enough:

My mom & I made them & they really didn't take much time at all! Plus with the colored tissue paper they looked so great! We used white yarn to hang them everywhere!

We hung on the lights outside, off of the shade cover, off of the ceiling fan in the kitchen over the dessert table, on the umbrella outside:

On the big tree:

They looked so nice!

My daughter wanted a pinata as well, so we found a princess crown pinata at Target that we hung from the tree:

We also had a little "guess how many jellybeans in the jar" game. The chalkboard crown & the small plastic paint jar also came from Michaels:

I just stamped a crown, put some bling on it & punched it out with my circle punch to put on the top of the lid of the jar. I also stamped a crown on the notecards for each girl to use to write down how many jellybeans they thought were in the jar.

Here's a close-up:

{There were 712 jellybeans in that jar! Yep, my hubby counted every single one!}

I'm really bummed that I forgot to get a photo of the whole dessert table all together, but at least I got some photos of the desserts. I made an artist's palette cake:

Some princess crown sugar cookies:

And some princess crown {pink} chocolate lollipops:

I also used my Silhouette to make a little subway art for the dessert table. I wrote words that describe my daughter, nicknames, things she loves, etc. & cut it out in some bright pink vinyl. I already had the flat canvas so I stuck it on that. Then I covered it with a couple of layers of Mod Podge. The canvas was bigger than I had thought it was so I added a pink bow at the top to fill up some of the extra white space.

I really like how it turned out:

And now that the party is over, we can put it up in my daughter's room!

Of course, I had to make a little birthday shirt for the birthday girl too:

I love those $5 t-shirts from Target (sometimes they go on sale too) & then I used my Silhouette once again to cut out the crown & the little heart from some heat transfer vinyl & just ironed them onto the shirt. Sorry for the glare from my flash, but the silver heat transfer looks awesome in person!

The birthday girl all dolled up for her party:

{Oh how we love her!}

And she loved her pretty pettiskirt that I bought her from Fairy Flowers Boutique:

Their stuff is very reasonably priced, super cute & ships really fast!

Whew! Typing up this post may have made me as tired as I was after the actual party! But it was all worth it!