An Art Party - Ella's 3rd Birthday!

For our daughter's 3rd birthday, I decided to throw her an Art Party.  She loves to color and paint, and even though I have no idea what she is drawing most of the time, she is always so proud to hand me her finished product.  I knew this was a theme she would really love.  However, my husband and I decided only one week before to have a party for her, so I had to act quickly to get  out invitations and pull everything together.  Here is what I came up with in a week...

Invitations: Since I had to act quickly to make all the invitations, I went with supplies I already had at the house. I typed up the text on the computer and cut around it to make the artist's palette.  I then used a circle punch to cut out circles and trimmed one side to look like a blotch of paint.  I backed the palette on red card stock and rounded the edges.  Simple.

Decorations:  At the entry door, I set up an artist's easel and made a giant crayon box Welcome Sign to sit on the easel. I used my Cricut machine to cut out all the letters and just enlarged the crayon photo from a Crayola box image I found online. I did have to do some photo editing with this to make it as large as I wanted, but I think the time spent on this was worth it. Love the way it came out. If you would like the image, just email me, and I can save you the hour editing!

I decorated all the tables with plastic tablecloths in primary colors.  As a centerpiece, I bought $10 worth of colorful flowers and arranged them into small vases I already owned. I borrowed large paint brushes from the art teacher at my school, and stuck 3 in each vase.

Above the food table, I created an art inspired banner.  I don't have a cartridge that has a paint can or paint brush, so I again used Google images to find a paint can and brush.  I traced these images on the card stock and cut them out.  The paint brushes served as the spaces between words. I have made several banners, but this one has to be my favorite.  Colorful and fun.  I also bought silver paint buckets from Home Depot and used a plastic tablecloth to  look like paint was spilled out and covering the table.  My intention was to hang these and have the paint spilling out onto the food table, but I ran out of time.  To label the food, I created tags using a paint brush font and a Clipart image.  I placed these on mini easels I found at Joanns for $2, but I also made some easels out of toothpicks (to save a bit of money).

I used a collage of picture frames on my wall to adapt into an art wall of my daughter's paintings, etc. 

Along the fence at the side of my back yard, I placed pieces of plywood together that I covered in cheap plastic tablecloths. I then used masking tape to create an art easel.  The kids used these for the painting activity (see below).

Menu:  I wanted to serve food in all colors of the rainbow to match the colors of the party.  I ended up serving:

• Red: Strawberries and Cherry tomatoes
• Orange: Orange Slices and Carrots (with ranch dip served in a hollowed out orange pepper)
• Yellow: Pineapple slices
• Green:  Grapes and Celery (again with dip in a hollow green pepper)
• Blue: Blueberries and blue licorice
• Purple: Purple Grapes and Blackberries

For the rest of the lunch, we had chips, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, and hot dogs. We had a wide range of drinks including lemonade with fresh strawberries.  As you can tell, my daughter LOVES fruit and vegetables!

Dessert: I got a little carried away with dessert!  Of course, first I made the cake.  This was such a fun cake...a rainbow cake! I promise to post the recipe in the next few days, and this was the coolest and easiest recipe!  I cut the round cake to look like a paint palette and added the paint splotches and brush.  I love the Crayon candles too.  I found them at Calico Cake Shop.

I also made cupcakes, Rice Krispie paint brushes and paint palette cookies.  We couldn't find a palette-shaped cookie cutter, so we used an empty can and bended it in to make the shape.  The rest is just frosting.  I used pretzel sticks as the paint brush on the cupcakes and just added a tip to it with frosting.  I bought some sticks at Michaels for the Rice Krispie treats, stuck them in after cutting the rectangles and then dipped them in various melted chocolates.

Party Activities:  The first art activity I had for the kids to do whenever they felt like it was Fruit Loop necklaces.  I set out yarn and Fruit Loops and let the kids make their own (and eat some along the way). It works really well to put a piece of tape around the end of the yarn so it doesn't fray and kids can easily string the cereal.

I also had chalk pieces set out for the kids to draw on the ground.

We used the easels for our first group activity. I gave each child an apron I bought at the Dollar Tree, a large paint brush (the ones from the centerpieces), and a paper plate with paint on it. I posted all the animals I had drawn on butcher paper up on the easels and the kids chose which one they wanted to paint.  SO FUN!  To make the coloring pages, I simply found an image on Google (choose line drawing) and then put it on an overhead projector to trace onto the paper.  I can't draw, so this was an easy way around it.  The kids loved these and it made great decor for the party.

The final activity was painting with their feet. I bought canvas from Michaels and used contact paper to put each child's first initial on the canvas.  The idea was that after the kids painted the canvas with their feet, I would remove the contact paper and the initial would still be the white of the canvas.  This idea did not work as well as I had hoped.  I think it would have worked great had I just had the kids use their hands to paint, but with their feet, they twisted which pulled up the initial on some of their artwork.

Favor: As a take home gift, I made crayon bags with card stock. I bought the bags in a multi-pack at Michaels, and used construction paper for the "wrapper".  I used black card stock and colored cardstock for the rest.  On the back was a tag that read "Thanks for helping to make my art party a masterpiece!".  Inside, I had a paint set I bought at the dollar store, 2 colored pencils, and a crayon I made.  If you've never made these round crayons...they are so easy and fun.  Spray a muffin pan with nonstick spray, and break up crayons into each hole (I used four crayons per muffin).  Then put in a 325 oven for 8 minutes.  Take out and cool. I put mine in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.  Then they are done!!  Such a fun way to reuse old crayons.

Hope you're inspired to host an art party soon....it's so much fun!