Shake it Up

My best customer is back at it again!  Her darling daughter turned six and she
pulled out all the stops to bring her dream to reality.

The birthday girl told her mom this year she wanted her party to be Shake it Up.  Don't know what that is?  It's a Disney show.  Oh wait, let me rephrase that - a cancelled Disney show.  Why mention the cancelled part, you ask?  Well because when a show is cancelled it becomes next to impossible to find the licensed products for it and that's what happened here.  Thank heavens for Ebay!  A search on the site and she found what she was looking for to make this party the awesome affair her daughter has become accustomed to.  She enlisted my help to put together a few little touches and she was on her way.

Thanks to a local kids party establishment, she was able to have a rockin' dance party -- Shake it Up style!

First things first, she wanted a cake topper.  She found one she liked and asked if I could recreate it for her.  She was able to find a few photos online of the main characters of the show for me to choose from.  After choosing the best ones, I headed off to the UPS store to have them enlarged.  Using the foam core board that I purchased from Hobby Lobby, I traced and cut out the two shapes.

After gluing the photos to the foam core and using sandwich toothpicks, I secured the characters to the styrofoam base.  Things were coming together well, but this was just the beginning - I needed to also cut her name out in foam core and paint the base orange.

Using floral wire, I was able to attach the 'Shake it Up' sign behind the characters.  Perfect!

Added on a few more decorative touches and one cake topper is finished.  Now it's time to work on the party favors.

The original party plans included a pinata but unfortunately the establishment did not allow things to be hung from the ceiling so that meant plan B.  Using the drink cups she received as part of her party pack, I created these candy cups (again, based on something she found elsewhere) that each of her guests received.

A late RSVP meant that the birthday girl would either have to forgo her candy cup or we'd have to come up with another idea.  Enter the birthday girls candy favor!  I found this cup at Michael's and after sending a few pictures of various cups to her mom for her approval, she liked this one the best.  What a time saver smart phone technology is!

Using my Oracal 651 outdoor vinyl (works best if you plan to wash the item), I personalized the cup first.

A trip to Party City and I picked up a variety of candy to add to the cup, being careful not to pick any peanut products as the birthday girl is highly allergic.  Talk about "WOW" factor!!

The day arrived and it was party time!  All pictures shown were given to me by my customer as I was unable to attend the party myself.  The birthday girl had a blast!

Party favors for the guests

Music CD's with personalized CD covers.  The back of this even had her picture on it -- too cute!

Another close-up

Photo op with the stars (and their choice of photo prop)

Birthday with flare!  Yes, I even made the cupcake toppers you see here too. :-)

Once again, I want to thank the Glenn family for allowing me to help make their baby girl's
birthday everything she wanted.  Until next year....

Monster What???

Have you heard of Monster High? Until a week ago, I had not. Being the mother of a 6 year old boy, this was outside of my knowledge base but apparently is all the rage with preteen girls. If you happen to have no idea what I'm talking about, allow me to give you the official "411".

According to Wikipedia, Monster High is "a fashion doll franchise created by Mattel in July 2010. The characters are inspired by monster movies, sci-fi horror, and thriller fiction therefore distinguishing them from most fashion dolls".  Who knew?  Certainly not I...LOL!

Anyway, my best customer was in need of a gift for a family member and this happens to be the party theme. She found exactly what she wanted from a party featured on Catch My Party.  She sent me the link and I was on my way.  Here is my version of the Monster High party centerpiece.

Image backed on foam core board

The image was blown up to fit an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper.  I cut it out and traced it on foam core board.  Using a straight razor I cut the shape out of the board then glued on the image.

Blingy!

I wanted to add a little something to it and what better than a little bling, right?  Every girl, even girl skeletons, like a jewel or two. {smile}

The original version looked like it was filled with tulle but my customer chose tissue paper and though I was a bit apprehensive at first, it turned out to be the perfect accent to it.

I found the base in the dollar bin section of Target.  I had the ribbon on hand and used my Silhouette machine to create the center.

So what do you think?  We think it turned out great and just in time to get in the mail before the party.  Another party score!

The Doc Is In!

My best customer has once again asked that I stretch my crafting ability to help with her daughter's 5th birthday party.  This year's theme -- Doc McStuffins.  Now let me tell ya, I love this show personally but my little guy will only watch it when there is "nothing else good on" {the words that come out of that boy...lol}.  So I was excited to help make her little girls' dreams come true with some very cute centerpieces.

The Doc Is In...let's party!

After searching the internet, she found centerpieces that she loved but didn't love the price.  She immediately emailed me the picture and asked if I could do something similar.  Because she is totally okay with my creative license when doing work for her {which I love!},  I was able to use the photo as a starting point to create something that was functional and that she would be proud to display.

I started off the project with the intent to try and get these centerpieces as close to the original inspiration as possible, so when I saw these great buckets in the dollar bin section of Target I was excited.  They were a great size but the wrong color -- nothing a can of spray paint wouldn't fix.

$1 bucket from Target

Sprayed with white primer

Spray painted hot pink

Now for the images.  My customer wanted the centerpieces to look the same from both the front and the back.  She was able to find free images online that we used so the next step was to create each one in mirror image -- the most important step for making them back-to-back.  I don't have Photoshop and wasn't sure how we were going to do this but she was determined and found a way to do this herself {girl power!}.  I took the images to the UPS store to have them enlarged.  The plan was to make the images fill an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper but that proved to be more difficult than either I or the young man at the store thought it would be.  In the end, I had to settle on them being as big as he could make them {which wasn't very large} and that meant I would have to rethink how these centerpieces would be done.

Enlarged image - cut out

Traced on foam core board then cut out with a straight razor.
Each image was then glued front/back to the board.

Since the images were smaller than expected, I needed to find a smaller container.  Target to the rescue again!  After saying a little prayer, I walked in and what did I see in the dollar bin section but a stack of these beautiful white containers.  It was like I heard a choir of angels singing 'hallelujah'...LOL!

$1 container from Target

Using my Silhouette machine, I cut the shapes needed to decorate the smaller container.

Hot pink oval glued to each side

Number five

Adding polka dots

Fifteen minutes and front/back is complete

Sides completed -- total time approx. one hour

When I placed the containers together one on top of the other, I didn't like how 'unfinished' the bottom container looked.  So I decided to make something simple to go around the bottom of each one.

Cut strips of tissue paper in hot pink and purple.  Using hot pink ribbon
I glued the strips on in an overlapping fashion to create a "skirt" for
the bottom of each larger container.

Measured 1 1/2 inches from the bottom and glued the ribbon around the bottom.

At this point in the process I was under the gun.  I was working on three different projects simultaneously and I didn't have the time to document the way I wanted to -- most of this project {and at least one of the others} was done very late at night.

So let me tell you how I wrapped it all up. Using glue {and a three pound weight}, I attached the small white container to the larger one.  I cut off about an inch of the tissue paper and made small slits in each section to give it a "fringe" look at the bottom.  I cut out the name on my Silhouette and glued them on the larger containers {both front and back}.  I attached each image to the base using thin purple craft sticks and inserted them into a cut piece of styrofoam that I purchased from the dollar store.  To finish them off, I took the same hot pink ribbon and glued it over top of the fringed piece at the bottom and filled each container with tissue paper and VOILA...sweet and charming centerpieces!

Lambie

Stuffy

Doc McStuffins

NOTE: Apologies for the poor individual photos.  I was in a hurry to deliver these and realized I hadn't taken pics.  I took several and these were the best.  Must remember to look at the settings on my camera before taking pics...oy vey!

I love helping others make memories.  Happy 5th Birthday Miss Corrine!!!

Where we like to party!

Christmas Treat Tree {gift for his teachers}

My son has two awesome Kindergarten teachers.  So for Christmas we wanted to show them how much we appreciate all of their hard work with something homemade.  I looked around my craft room to see what I had to work with and I remembered that I had these great paper mache bags/boxes that I bought on clearance in Hobby Lobby after Christmas last year.

Now, what to do with them...hmmm.  Since these are going to be Christmas gifts, what says Christmas better than 'Santa'?  An idea has been born {haha}, so off to Michaels for some scrapbook paper to cover these in.

I didn't want the traditional fire engine red, so I opted for a deeper red with a shiny black and silver accent.  At this point my creative juices began to flow and I decide that I would like to turn this into a 'treat tree'.  Another trip to Michaels for styrofoam trees (my stash was depleted on the 12 Days of Christmas tree here) and some hunter green spray paint.

Sorry, but I don't have pics of the process for the Santa box.  Most of this was done late at night and finding sufficient light in this house for photos is next to impossible...LOL.  The steps I took to cover the boxes are these: (1) I took the handles off, (2) I measured each side of the box and cut the red paper down to size, (3) using Aleene's tacky glue I glued the cut pieces of red paper to each side including the bottom, (4) I added very thin black ribbon around the top and seams of the box, (5) I cut the black paper in two inch strips and glued them around the box in four separate pieces {two long/two short}, (6) I then cut the silver paper in a 3 inch x 3.5 inch square and cut out a square in the middle, (7) I cut a small strip to make the prong and glued it to the silver square, (8) I added a little bling with the crystal jewels on the belt {even Santa likes a little sparkle, don't ya think?}, (9) using a long craft stick I inserted it into the bottom of the tree, and (10) I glued the stick tree into another piece of styrofoam inside the box, filled the box with red and green tissue paper.

Here it is almost finished.

Now for the treats!  After checking Pinterest, I found an easier version of a cake pop -- an Oreo pop found {here} from the Camp Clem blog.  I bought double stuff Oreos, a box of candy canes, vanilla candy melts and wooden skewers (these have a sharp edge and work better than lollipop sticks since they needed to be stuck in the styrofoam tree) and with the help of the little prince we got to work.

I melted, dipped, dunked and refrigerated the Oreo pops and after they chilled a bit was able to bag them. Now here is where a brilliant idea was great in theory but poorly executed.  I didn't think about how heavy these Oreo pops would be so the plan was to have ten of these around the cone in three layers.  I learned very quickly that I didn't factor in the weight and after five of them they almost toppled over...YIKES!  Removing some and choosing to just put them in the middle to evenly distribute the weight, this is what I ended with.

This is definitely not how I envisioned this project to end up...not even close, but when have any of my projects turned out exactly like I envisioned them -- hahaha!

The good side of this was that his teachers really like it and were thankful for our generosity.  One of them even said she would try the Oreo pops with her two year old daughter.  Now to me, that's a success!

From my family to yours, we wish you a Merry Christmas!

Where we are partying!