Are You Mad?

It's almost May and I've only completed one layout for my 2011 album! {whaaaat!?!} I must be mad... or maybe just too busy with other projects! I had this idea in my head for this layout ever since my daughter's Birthday party. The kids made these great Mad Hatter hats and I thought it would be fun to line them up for mug shots!! There are lots of fun elements throughout the pages, but I left plenty of white space for your eyes to rest.

Birthday Party 2011 ~ Food & Fun

More pictures from the Birthday Tea Party for you. This year I wanted to come up with an activity for the kids to do and also give them a little something to take home with them to remember the party. Mad Hatter hats was the perfect craft project. You have to make the food special too! Here is the Dairy Queen cake that my daughter designed herself. Oh! and if you've never had one of these cakes they are soooo yummy! It was layered with vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream and in the center crushed Oreo cookies and fudge.




Here are some more goodies for the guests. Little lemon, lime and sugar tea cookies filled these darling cupcake cups. We scattered old fashioned salt water taffy's in a bright array of colors. They were both a big hit. I however, was tickled with how my "Eat Me" tags turned out. Just like the original book and movies. I printed the phrase on card stock then die cut them out with a Spellbinders label. I stamped them in coordinating colors with the Universal Background stamp {D1477}. Then adhered them to another die cut label. Just some matching ribbon to finish them off.

You can't forget the tea at a Tea Party! We chose to have iced tea's though rather than hot considering the gorgeous warm weather we were blessed with this weekend! We had sweet tea, peach tea and raspberry tea. They had tags too! Fortunately no one shrunk or grew bigger than the house !?!

Now on to the FUN!! Preparation for this part took place a couple of weeks ago. I tracked down several paper grocery sacks. This was harder than I thought! Every one is switching over to plastic or recyclable bags these days and the paper sacks are harder to locate. Once I had 20 of them I rolled on a flat exterior paint on all sides and top. The paint gives them a canvas to work on and also makes them more sturdy. You can paint them any color you choose, but I opted for white so that all the embellishments they would add later would truly be the stars!

The table was set with embellishments that my daughter and I gathered from all sorts of craft stores. Anything found in the marked down clearance section is the BEST! The raised trays in the center of the table are actually really cheap plastic cups turned upside down and crazy glued to plates. They could be super easy dessert platters too!

Super fun embellishments include: foam shapes and alphabets, rhinestones, pipe cleaners, wiggle eyes, buttons, feathers, flowers, ribbon and pom poms.

All the essential tools were on hand.

Rolling the bottom of the sack about 3 folds will fit most heads. Once each child was fitted the creative process begins.

Here is my daughter with her hat all finished. I had all the kids pose with their hats on and took photo's. They actually turned out like comical Mad Mug Shots! I can't wait to scrap them all.

I hope you enjoyed these Birthday Party posts and gathered some fun ideas to try at your next event.

Daughter~ "I wonder what the theme will be for next year? Ooooh! Yeah, let's start planning it!"

Son~ "Hey, my Birthday is next month, let's talk about that."

Mom~ "Let me get some sleep first, then we'll think about it!"

The Mad Hatter

I had some leftovers from my Home Wreath banner piece so here's one of the items I created from them. It's a simple layout that I added a fun wreath to the top. Rather than the usual triangle shape I used a half circle shape. It's simply festive and reminds me of the creativity and artistic expression we experienced that hot summer day at the Utah Art Festival.




Look closely... there is another form of faux stitching here on this page. On the cocoa card stock under the photo you'll see that I've done some dry embossing about 1/4" line around the edges. After lightly sanding the line I pierced holes along the line giving the look of stitching.