a slightly spooky dinner party

If you happen to check out this space at all regularly you must have noticed I'm not around much. I am currently working on a big project that's taking up all of my time and focus and so I'm not doing as much other work, let alone jobs around the apartment so there hasn't really been much of anything to share here. It's probably going to continue to be pretty sporadic around here through January but I will pop in whenever I have something I can share. Including a party for October!

I just couldn't leave off without doing something for this month so I gave myself two hours and whatever supplies I had in the house to put this together

I started with color pallet. I wanted to go almost all white, with bits of gray and black and then some sort of color for a centerpiece. I layered some lace on top of a white tablecloth with white napkins and vintage silver flatware.

I set each place with a large smooth white rectangular plate (thank you mom!) and smaller gray textured plate, and the scull party favor and the matchbook place cards. The glasses are vintage and  for a centerpiece I added a bunch of apples and small animal bones on top of the lace runner. 

The cake was topped with simple bat shapes cut out of black card stock and googly eyes both glued to wooden skewers. I made another cake stand out of a plate and polka dot bowl (I'm loving the layered dish cake stand-so easy) The backdrop was made out of white and gray honeycombs and some larger paper bats. 

I got the sculls at a dollar store and spray painted them white and added the tea candles, then melted wax around the edge to drip down the sides. I covered mini matchboxes with black paper and glued on more googly eyes so they looked a bit monster-ish. The names were written on vellum with ink

Like I said, this was all stuff I had on hand but if I were to price out the few things that could have been bought special it would still be super inexpensive.

Supplies

honeycombs......................................................................................$12

sculls.................................................................................................$4

googly eyes.......................................................................................$2

total...................................................................................................$16

I've always wanted to do a more grown up cocktail style Halloween party and while it wasn't in the cards time wise this year, I will be storing away these pictures for inspiration and hopefully next year I can make it happen.

September birthday party

September's party was super easy, as I actually threw my own birthday party this year I had all sorts of things on hand. I did a park picnic which was lovely but I wanted to see how the same elements would function at a more simple dinner party so I threw together this pretty table.

The background was a mixture of tassel garlands and some gold Mylar number balloons. Both are hung on the wall with washi tape and made things feel instantly festive. 

For the table I started with a white + print table cloth, and layered some light blue woven napkins at each place as a place mat of sorts. I used the same white plates and gold flatware seem to be my standard go to, but I layered the dark blue floral napkins and cutlery on the plate with a different patterned bow tie at each place. I also used a gold rimmed wine glass and a shorter water glass, and place cards I made out of leftover invitations, with a felt flower clipped to each. 

As the cake topper I used the original drawing for my invitations, which I redid the color to, and I made a new cake stand by layering a white plate on an overturned blue bowl.

Cost breakdown was as follows:
balloons.....................................................................$8.00
pin backs...................................................................$4.00
hair clips...................................................................$3.00
total..........................................................................$15.00

This table was super fun and easy to put together, and it was a nice challenge to try to use the parts from my picnic in a different setting and see them still look nice. Also I very much enjoy doing party favors that can actually be worn at the party, it's such a nice extra touch.

making my own birthday invitations

In some ways, making something for myself is the easiest, but in some ways its far more challenging than any other kind of project. Maybe because I have all of these random ideas bubbling up and have trouble deciding on any one, maybe because I'm a terrible fickle client, who knows. I decided to throw a birthday party for myself this year (it's a big one, so it seemed appropriate) and when I finally decided on a plan (park picnic with lawn games) I figured I'd let myself indulge in a bit of party planning and decoration cuteness, just to get it out of my system I guess. So in addition to planning an elaborate menu of snacks and doing a bunch of balloon decorations and party favors (more on those later) I made real invitations. Crazy right? And then I sent them in the main----even crazier!

So I spent an afternoon just doodling around with supplies figuring out a plan and then producing a small run of these. I started by pulling out all the colored envelopes I have leftover from other things and picked the turquoise ones which started me on a color pallet. Then I decided that I wanted to do a sort of die-cut style illustration for the front of the card, so I drew up this portrait of myself as a panda, scanned it into the computer and and sized it so that I could get two cards out of an standard sheet of card stock. I did a few versions of the colors in the panda's dress and balloons before I settled on the final version.

Then it was time to come up with the interior. I was struggling with what to say in the card, how to convey it, so eventually I just wrote something up that sounded sort of conversational, and then lettered it out with ink, scanned it and cleaned it up, and printed it out on vellum. I used the edge of the panda on the front of the card as a template for designing the interior so that when the card is closed only the left side of the text is visible, and then when you open it up you get all the additional information.

As I wanted some more color on the interior of the card, I also cut down some grass green paper to layer behind the vellum in the interior, then I stacked all three pieces together and ran them through the sewing machine to attache them all together.

(I also decided the panda needed to be saying something and I sort of just went for the most obvious as you can see here, it seemed appropriate!)

Finally, I cut up some confetti from the leftover bits of paper scattered across my desk, piled it in each card and put them in their envelopes. I used these giant neon orange price stickers I've had forever but never had a project for, and addressed them with ink. The ones that were sent through the mail had a collection of colorful stamps as well. And in just a few hours, I had a pile of invitations ready to drop in the mail, and deliver around to various people. I always feel like invitations set the tone for an event and so I'm hoping these get people excited for a festive little shindig. I've always loved receiving colorful and exciting mail (ie-anything other than bills) so I figure other people probably enjoy it too and I was happy to spice up the mailbox for a day.

August circus party

This months party went together very quickly, if a bit down to the wire time wise. I went with a circus theme because I have this set of beautiful circus printed tin plates I wanted to use and the rest of it just fell into place naturally. 

I set the table with a red eyelet tablecloth and the aforementioned tin plates. Polka dot glasses with striped straws for beverages, and simple white napkins with gold flatware finished it off. With the cake on a pedestal in the middle I just added a collection of rubber animals down the middle of the table to finish things off. Simple but with a fair amount of color and interest. 

On the wall I used red washi tape to put up a blown up photo of my mother feeding elephants in the circus, and I used a roll of bright blue tickets as streamers hanging across the table. Again, very simple but still makes an impact. I made up a simple ticket image for place cards and printed it on blue paper to tie the streamers color into the table setting.

For the cake I painted stripes on some white card stock and made the circus tent, then added some tiny animals around the perimeter.

Budget

Tickets.........................................................................4.00
Blueprint copy.............................................................4.00
washi tape....................................................................3.00
total............................................................................11.00

beehive cake topper

Just wanted to pop in real quick to talk about making that cake topper for the tea party. This should wrap up the last of the July party posts so that I can move on to other thinks, like this months party!
The structure of the hive was pretty simple, I just folded and taped some construction paper into a roughly hive-like shape and then covered it in yellow crepe paper. But that didn't seem cute and bee-ish enough so of course I had to make some bees.

Since it seemed best for them to be vaguely in scale to the mini hive I pulled out these little yellow pom poms I've had stashed from some old project. I skewered each one on a straight pin, drew on some stripes and glued in some tiny paper wings and voila! It's a bumble bee!

You can see the scale represented pretty well her next to that big sharpie marker.

Since they were already on pins I was able to just stick them into the hive wherever I wanted and I also added a little buzzbuzzbuzz banner on a longer straight pin as well. Simple and cute.

Paper flowers

The paper flowers for last months part turned out to be very simple. I wanted something sturdy so I used construction paper. Then I started with a small middle 'flower' and kept cutting bigger and bigger ones until I thought it would be full enough. I rolled the tips or sides of the petals down so that they would be more curved, cut a small fringed yellow piece for the center and green paper leaves, and then stacked it all and glued it together.

When that seemed to work out, I used it as a template and cut out a bunch more so that they would be more or less uniform and assembled them all factory style.

It seems like this super simple technique would be easily modifiable to make different 'types' of flowers, change the shape of the petals, play around with the leaves and such, but overall it was was easy and satisfying. As you can see I made them about the size of a tea saucer but they could easily be made bigger and more layered, or very tiny as well.

Bee piñata

The bumble bee was a big part of the decoration for July's party, and was relatively easy to construct.

I made a base out of crumpled up packing paper (I'd just gotten a box of shoes so that was convenient) and then wrapped it in strips of yellow tissue paper to form a base. Then I cut up a bunch of white, yellow and black fringe.

I started with a small circle of white fringe at the bottom, or butt of the bee, and worked in circles gluing on fringe as I went, switching to yellow after a few rows.

When the entire body was covered in fringe, I made legs and antenna out of black pipe cleaners, doubled up and twisted together. I tried to make little feet at the bottom of them but figured I could bend them into more leg like positions once the bee was all put together. I punched holes in the bee with an awl and threaded the legs in with a dab of hot clue so they would stick. Same for the antenna.

And then I cut some vaguely wing shaped pieces out of drafting tracing paper and and sewed the layers together, then glued them up under the stripe of black fringe. I tried out some kind of 'eyes' but thought they just looked too cartoon-esc so I scrapped that idea. I used a big upholstery needle to go through the body sideways with fishing line so that I could hang him from an angle. I did some fluffing of the fringe and straightening of the legs once it was on the wall, I think this took about two hours to construct. 

It is not a real pinata, in the sense that it isn't hollow and full of candy, but as a three dimensional decorative object I think it adds a nice oomf to the honeycomb wall. And now of course it's languishing on top of my bookshelf until I come up with another venue for it. 

July tea party

This months party was really really easy to pull together. As I said a the beginning of the week, I grabbed stuff that I had until there was a sort of place setting that I liked the look of, and then I made decorations to go with that. In this case the yellow teapot and bumble bee honey pot really got me going on a honey and flower themed tea party. 

The background was a grid of paper hexagons, a bumble bee pinata and some paper flowers. All very quick to put together but I will do tutorials for both soon. 

For the place settings I layered the white plates, floral bowls and then added the saucers and overturned teacups on top of them. I wanted to save the middle of the table for the tea service, as it were, plus I liked how the bowls looked with just the scalloped edge peeking around.The tablecloth is a polka dot sheet from the thrift store and the napkins I made forever ago when a favorite rose print sheet died and I wasn't ready to throw it away entirely. I used my same gold flatware again because gold just of course the yellow tone matched the setting so well.

The melamine sugar bowl and pitcher were from a set I found in a junk box on the corner when I was in college. Most of the multi colored teacups have been appropriated for all manner of other projects but these two were so nice I kept them around for whenever I happen to have a tea party (not often enough in my opinion) and of course they go so well with my yellow tea set (found by my mother) and the bumblebee honey pot (same-she really is the queen of thrifting!)

The little hexagon favor boxes were decorated with yellow paper and pink ribbon (filled with honey candies) and the extra large paper flowers were intended as placecards (I was going to write guests names on the leaves) but I liked them so much as is that I left them blank. However they would of course be simple to use in that way. The cake topper was a paper base with crepe paper and mini bees made out of tiny pom poms. I'll do a tutorial on this as well.

The cost broke down as such:

yellow crepe paper...............................................................................$2.50

yellow and pink construction paper.....................................................$3.00

black pipe cleaners...............................................................................$2.00

hex boxes.............................................................................................$5.00

total......................................................................................................$12:50

Once again, I have tons of general crafty things, glue, scissors and various dishes, so by using stuff I have this was very inexpensive. Even if I'd purchased everything new though it wouldn't have cost a lot more. 

I will try to get to the crafts from this one quickly, and until then I'm brainstorming ideas for the next party. Any ideas?