Cardboard Cut Outs Detail

Last week I shared an overview of K's pirate party.   I want to try to highlight a few of the ideas for you.

First of all, lets start with the cardboard cutouts.  We were looking for some kind of decoration that would get us a lot of bang for our buck.  Something big and fun and - hey why not cut outs?

Real Pirate Party

This past Saturday we celebrated K's 3rd birthday with a Pirate Party!  The weather was lovely, a bunch of the guests came in costume and overall the party was a blast.  Below are some highlights of the party.  I will detail certain parts of the party later this week.

Sneak Peek #2

I have been re-miss this past week and have neglected all of my friends in the blogosphere.  Things have been a little hectic, but that's no excuse.  Can we still be friends? :)

K's Pirate Party is coming up this Saturday.  I wanted to give you one more sneak peek into some of the things we have planned.  Our house is just buzzing with excitement.  She definitely has my love for entertaining.

Enjoy!

Pirate Party Preview

Just a sneak peek at what we have in store for our upcoming Pirate Birthday Party.

Plenty of more swashbuckling action to come.

Hmm...what could we be doing with these???

Pirate Party Invitations

The foundation of a good party is the invitation.  The invitation sets the mood of the party long before the first guest arrives or the first bite of food is prepared.  Taking the extra time to create an invitation is certainly worth the effort.

For our pirate party it was a no-brainer - a message in a bottle.  I sourced the perfect bottle and found them to be over a dollar a piece.  So we improvised with plastic water bottles.  Thrifty and green!

We started out by printing the invitation with a parchment style background.  The wording is as follows:

Ahoy me hearties we're having a party

Ye be invited to celebrate the 3rd birthday of Captain K

Chart yer course for our house

Date______________   Time_______________

X marks the spot

Ye landlubbers (big & small) are encouraged to come dressed in yer pirate best

Yo Ho Let's Go!  Pillage an' plunder await.

Arrrrr....you coming to the party?  Let us know by ________

Once we printed the invitations we crumpled up the paper repeatedly and burned the edges to give it an old, weathered look.

We painted the tops of the water bottles gold, put sand in the bottom and added small sea shells.  The invitations were rolled up tightly and tied with red raffia ribbon before being placed inside the bottled.

Simple, inexpensive and very fitting for the theme.

Pirate Party Post #1

Over the next month I will be posting several pirate party ideas. My little girl, K's third birthday is coming up. I know, I know a pirate party for a little girl? This is how the conversation went -

Me - your birthday is coming up. What kind of party do you want? A princess party?

K - no, a pirate party.

Me - pirates?

K - yeah pirates, you know mommy, like captain hook and swords.

Me - I know what pirates are, but how do you? Are you sure you don't want a princess party?

And so it goes that we are having a pirate party. So far it has been an absolute blast to plan! Like I said, this will be the first of many more pirate party posts. Say that three times fast will ya?

So for today's first post I am going to show you the weathered bottles we have made.  This is a great way to recycle empty spaghetti sauce jars or other glass jars.  All you need is a glass jar, some regular masking tape and either brown shoe polish, brown paint or a distressing ink pad.

This one is being made with an empty wine bottle.

Tear the masking tape into small pieces.  Don't cut the tape, you will want the irregularity of the torn edge.  Layer the tape all over the bottle until you cover the entire thing.

This is a great activity to let the kids help with.  I lined up several pieces of torn tape for K and she went to town covering the bottle.

Once the bottle is covered, take your medium of choice - we used brown paint because that is what we had on hand, and blot it on your bottle.  Don't paint it on there, you want it to be uneven to give the bottle a worn look.  I found that with brown paint it works best to crumple up a paper towel and use that to blot the paint on the tape.

Cover the entire bottle and let it dry.

We have also made this project with a Coke bottle, spaghetti sauce jar and a pizza sauce jar.

Happy crafting ye landlubbers!