Thursday, December 31, 2009

Party #5

From Ohdeedoh

Look! Captain Ryder's Pirate Party
 2008-04-11-ryder.jpg

We love a good party. We especially love a party like Ryder's pirate-themed birthday bash which included many personal touches and embodied a DIY spirit.

Ryder's love of pirates was inspired by his fondness for Captain Feathersword, a friend of the Wiggles . When he requested a pirate-themed party for his third birthday his family swung into action to make it happen. For starters, his grandparents helped mom, Christie, make his Captain Feathersword costume while she devised an enticing invitation.


To set the mood for a pirate themed party we sent out 'treasure map' invitations. I traced a map to our house (X marks the spot!) and embellished it with drawings of pirate ships and treasure chests before photocopying it. To make it look old, I tea-dyed the invitations and burnt the edges.

2008-04-11-invite.jpg



To make the party food a bit more pirate-y we put small jolly roger flags in it and we ordered some fantastic pirate-themed cupcakes from a local caterer called Class Cupcake. The birthday cake was a chocolate mud cake in the shape of a pirate from an amazing local cake shop called Let Them Eat Cake. For decorations, we put a couple of big pirate flags on the front of the house and we strung up lots of pirate balloons everywhere.



2008-04-11-cake.JPG

To keep the kids amused we had a pirate jumping castle and in the backyard my husband had made a trail of flour to a spot where treasure was buried. The kids ran around the yard following the trail until they found the spot and then 'Captain Daddy' dug it up. What they found was a vintage chest that my husband had sourced from a secondhand store and inside we had filled it with pirate booty which included plastic gold coins and lots of faux jewelry all courtesy of our local party shop. The kids loved digging into the chest and they all managed to pillage some booty for themselves.



2008-04-11-buried treasure.JPG

As the goody bags for the kids to take home I made small linen drawstring bags and Gocco printed a scull and crossbones onto the front. Inside the kids got some chocolate gold coins, a small plastic telescope from a local kids shop called Parenthood & some pirate bubbles.


2008-04-11-treasure bags.JPG


Pirate Coloring Book Pages


Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Pirate Flag how to

pirate flag how to



Materials:


  • Black standard size pillowcase

  • 1/2 yard white cotton fabric

  • 1/4 yard red and white stripe fabric

  • 1/2 yard Heat n Bond

  • 3/4 inch diameter dowel

  • Gold bobble/earring

  • Gold thread


Tools:


Steps:



  1. Iron all of your fabric.

  2. Iron the Heat n Bond Iron on Adhesive to the back of the white fabric. (Make sure and turn the steam off on your iron or it will bubble the adhesive and fabric.)

  3. Cut out the templates and trace the skull and crossbones onto the back of the white fabric, on the paper side of the Heat n Bond. (NOTE: The crossbones template is only half of the design. Use the same template for both sides and cut it as one piece.)

  4. Cut out the designs in the fabric and lay it on the black pillowcase for placement.

  5. Next peel the backs off the designs and iron them into place.

  6. Using the top half of the skull (cut slightly larger than the top shape) on the skull template and the tie template (on the same page as the crossbones), cut a skull cap out of the red and white fabric.

  7. Apply the skull cap with a glue gun. To give it a 3-dimensional appearance, pipe the glue only around the top of the skull leaving the bottom of the cap open.

  8. Apply the skull cap ties by gluing them at the corner of the skull and leaving the bottom of the ties to hang loose.

  9. Finish the cap with loops of gold thread (about 10 times around two fingers). Simply hot glue them where the ties and the skull cap connects. (See picture.)

  10. Finally, add a little bling by hot gluing a bobble earring to the right side of the skull.

  11. Now for the flag pole, turn your flag over and pipe glue along the open seam of the pillowcase. Line the pole up with the top of the fabric and lay the dowel down on the line of glue. Roll it a half turn, pipe another line of glue and roll the pole again. Repeat until the pole is completely covered.


This great craft is not only fun decoration for the party, but also doubles for play or bedroom decor after the party is over. Happy crafting!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Pirate Party

From One Fabulous Mom



My friends Heather and Morgan had the most fabulous Pirate Party for their son Levi's 3rd Birthday. Everything looked so incredible I just had to share!!!



They served corn dogs, sandwiches, fruit, veggie dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and renamed them all with a pirate theme!




Captain Levi's Corny Dogs!




When you walked in they took a polaroid picture of you with a big Pirate! This was attached to your goody bag!
Here's Heather posing.




Here are all the goody bags hanging on a clothes line!



They had a jumpy with a basketball hoop and a slide on the side! Landon was loving it!





The Cake was to die for! A treasure chest that was completely edible and delicious!!!!

Levi had a great day!!!




Saturday, December 26, 2009

Pirate Party Bottle invitation

Party Invitations

A good friend recently threw a pirate-themed birthday party for her son. She was eager to have some really fun and unique invitations, and that’s exactly what I came up with for her. What says “pirate” more than a treasure map in an old bottle, right?


These invitations were a lot of fun to make, and the kids even helped us with most of them. They were quite proud of the results and the party guests were thrilled to receive them. Here’s how to do it.


Gather the supplies


For the invitation itself, you’ll need regular white copy paper, a black marker, a squirt bottle of water, and optionally a candle. For the bottle that holds the invitation, you’ll need an empty glass bottle and some masking tape, along with a little paint-on varnish.


pirate invitationFor both the invitation and the bottle, you’ll need some of Tim Holtz’ Distress Ink stamp pads in two colors — Vintage Photo (which is a dark brown) and Antique Linen (which is a light brown). While you could theoretically use any brown stamp pad, the Distress Ink will work the best because it’s made specifically for this type of application. It’s water-based, so it will blend and smear and make your items look really worn and ragged, which is exactly the look we’re going for here. Trust me, this stuff blends amazingly well and is totally worth having in your craft bag.


Draw the map


pirate invitationTake some regular white copy paper and draw a map on it with a black marker. Have some fun and keep it loose and graphic. Make a big island with jagged shores. Put a giant “X” to mark the spot of the party and label it with the address where the party will be. Make a bold, curving, dashed line for a path around the island and put several obstacles or landmarks along the way, each one giving a clue to the party (things like guest of honor, time, date, etc). If you need some inspiration to get you started, here is a scanned copy of my pirate map. You’ll obviously have to change the details, but you can trace parts of it for your map.


For help with fonts, try searching for pirate font samples online. This is the one I used to model my writing after. Just do the best you can to copy it. Remember that we want this to be rugged and distressed, so it doesn’t have to be perfect!


Once you’ve got your map drawn, make enough photocopies of it for all the invitations you need to send. Again, you can use regular white copy paper for this.


Distress the map


pirate invitationTime to make that pretty white map look rugged and old! To get rid of those straight paper edges, you can either tear the edges or burn them. I like the look of the burning better myself, so that’s what I did. Just light a candle and carefully hold the paper next to the flame until it lights. As soon as it catches, blow it out so the whole thing doesn’t catch on fire. I recommend doing this outside and keeping a metal bowl nearby so that you can toss the paper in it if the flames get out of control. pirate invitation It’s also handy to have a damp towel on hand so you can pat it on any smoldering edges to put them out completely. Obviously, this is the one part of this project that your kids should NOT help with. Please be careful!


Now that the edges are nice and rough, take the entire page and crumple it into a ball! (This is the part the kids will really love!) You want to get the paper full of nice crinkles and folds. When you’re content, unfold the paper and press it out flat on the table.


pirate invitationNow take the Antique Linen (lighter brown) Distress Ink and rub the pad lightly over the paper. You’ll see that the ink sticks to the folds and creases but not to the flat parts of the paper. The result is a really cool distressed look.


Be sure to ink the front and back of the paper, and go a little heavier on the edges, to give it a nice look.


We’ve got a fun map now, but we need to pirate invitationtame it down a little and wear it out a little more. Take your squirt bottle and squirt water evenly all over the paper. Use enough water so that the paper is thoroughly wet, but not so much that there are puddles. The water will do two things: it will cause the ink to blend a little, creating a really nice smeary effect on the paper, and it will relax the creases you made so that the map is a little closer to flat (and will be easier to roll up later).


pirate invitationBe careful not to handle the map much when it is wet, or else you might tear it! Leave it flat on the table until it’s totally dried. If you want to hurry this process along, you can use an embossing gun or hair dryer to gently dry the paper.


Make the bottle


Grab any glass bottle you’ve got. It can be from soda, beer, barbecue sauce, or whatever is sitting empty in your recycling bin. (If you don’t have any bottles handy and need to make some invitations now, I suggest you make root beer floats for everyone!) Soak it in hot water to remove the label and then dry the bottle thoroughly.


Now we’re going to use an old technique I’ve been doing since I was a kid — we’re going to cover this bottle with tape to make it look like old leather or canvas. Just take some ordinary beige masking tape and start tearing it into tiny pieces (about 1/2″ to 1″). Add the pieces of tape to the bottle, overlapping them quite a bit. Be sure to tear the ends of the tape — don’t cut them — because we want it to look really rough and random. Keep going until you have the entire bottle covered with tape pieces.


pirate invitationpirate invitationpirate invitation


When I was a kid, this is where I would pull out my dad’s old shoe polish for the next step, but since pirate invitation not many folks have shoe polish these days (including my dad), I had to find an alternative. Grab the Vintage Photo (dark brown) colored Distress Ink and start applying it liberally to the bottle. The ink will be darker on the edges of the tape, which will look really neat. If you have trouble getting into the curves along the neck, remember that this ink is water soluble, so just get a damp paper towel and smudge and dab the ink into all the crevices.


Decorate the bottle


At this point you can optionally add some decoration to the bottle. Use a black permanent marker to draw a skull and crossbones or a pirate ship and add the words “You’re invited”. This will help your guests instantly know that this is an invitation.


Varnish the bottle


Since the ink we used is water-based, you’ll find that it will come off the bottle onto your hands without much effort. To avoid dirtying your friends’ fingers, we need to seal in the ink. To do this, just get some regular clear gloss varnish and apply it gently with a brush over the whole bottle. Work quickly and carefully, because the water-based ink will actually blend into the varnish, but that’s a good thing — it will let you push the ink around and create the perfect result. The varnish will also darken the colors and add a really rich look to the finished bottle.


Ready to go!


Roll up the map and stick it into the bottle (but make sure it doesn’t go all the way in!). Your invitations are now ready to be delivered to your guests.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Pirate Party

From TomKat Studio My nephew, Jack just turned 5 and had a fabulous pirate birthday party! My sister-in-law, Nicollette is very creative and loves invitations and parties as much as I do. She designed amazing pirate invitations and decor! Of course, I helped out with baking and decorating the cupcakes with toppers that matched the invitations! (notice my new fancy frosting technique!)Here are some pictures I took at the party!
This was a menu Nic designed and displayed to match the invitation!

The cupcake stand, making yet another appearance! Boy, this thing has gotten so much use since I bought it in March for Kate's birthday!
Nic did adorable treasure chest favors filled with chocolate gold coins & pirate bouncy balls! I love the silver satin ribbon and tags she made!

Here are the cute pinata loot bags that she made! She decorated with a few "Captain Jack" signs around the house! I made a quick gift tag for our gift to match the party decor!
Arrgh! It was great party! Everyone had a fabulous time!

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Pirate drink

Pirate Drink


We made our version of a Jolly Roger for Halloween-made with shark's blood of course (which is grenadine to you land lovers)! We dressed it up with a licorice straw, black swords & cherries, pirate flag & gummy pirate, and Beware banner. What is your favorite drink for Halloween?

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Pirate Party

Beware of Pirates





Cap'n Evan's Treasure Chest

Pirate Tattoos


Playing Cannonball Blast AKA hot potato

Goody Bags

Place Settings


Favorite game of all the pirates

One Eyed Willie's Cupcakes

A few of you have asked to see Evan's pirate party earlier this year so I have attached a few photos. Upon arrival, all pirates received eye patches, bandanna, tattoos, and pirate rings. While waiting for the remaining guests to arrive, the kids made their own candy pirate necklaces. We played three games: pin the pirate flag on the pirate ship, cannonball blast (bought from Amazon), and Sink a Ship with pirate cannonballs. The winners received small treasure chests with gold chocolate coins. The final event was the treasure hunt which contained several clues which lead to the treasure chest pinata.

We created a kiddie cocktail called the Jolly Roger with "sharks blood" in skull & crossbones ice cubes (cherry juice) & Sprite, garnished with a sword of cherries. (the kids loved it) For Captain Evan’s Birthday Feast we served: Dread Pirate Roberts Dogs, Blackbeard’s BBQ Pulled Pork & Chicken, Davy Jones Fruit Medley, Jack Sparrow’s Sweet Potato & Cranberry Salad, One Eyed Willie’s Cupcakes & Captain Hook’s 24 Karat Cake. We also rented a cool Pirate themed slide and bounce house.