Pink Lemonade Birthday Party July 14, 2011

At the beginning of June, I hosted a Pink Lemonade birthday party for my daughter’s fourth birthday. Her favorite colors are pink and yellow (though it seems to change on a monthly basis) and I designed the whole printable collection around that. Here are photos from the party. This collection features a photo of the birthday girl and Aubrie certainly loved seeing her face in the decorations!

Banner

Large pom-poms

 

Door sign

 

Food-wise, we offered cheese and crackers, grilled hot dogs, star shaped fairy bread (in pink and yellow), and a huge fruit platter. What is fairy bread? Very simple… spread butter on a slice of bread then covered with sprinkles and cut into a fancy shape using a cookie cutter! Kids LOVE this! For the drinks, we of course had lemonade with huge strawberries floating inside and strawberry flavored Capri Sun. There were also bottles of water.

 

Fairy bread

 

Fruit platter

Strawberry lemonade

Water bottle wrappers

Dessert was very simple: a home-baked cake that featured strawberries and had pink and yellow layers inside. Wanna know how I made this simple cake? Check out the post here. This was decorated with the 4 inch party circle. We also had cupcakes in chocolate and vanilla. These were decorated with cupcake toppers and sprinkles! They looked very pretty and tasted delicious.

Dessert station

Cupcakes

 

Cupcake stand

 

Birthday cake

Inside of cake

 

For the party favors, I made pinwheels using yellow glitter paper and placed these inside pink goody bags. I printed labels with each child’s name on it and stuck it to the goody bag. We also had bottles of bubbles with matching labels, pink and yellow pencils, and personalized chocolate bars! I love the personalized chocolate bars. I have had these for every birthday and I keep a wrapper in a book of birthdays that I have for my daughter. It is a great keepsake because it includes her weight, height, things she enjoys doing, accomplishments, etc.

Goody bags

 

Personalized chocolate bars

 

Birthday keepsake

 

Bubbles

Birthday girl

If you like this party and want a similar one for your little girl, check out the Pink Lemonade collection available now at my Etsy store!

 

 

 

 

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Tutorial: Hand-tied banner May 17, 2011

I love the look of the hand-tied banner and I love that it can be so versatile! You can print the letters on squares or circles, make these big or small to determine the length of your banner, use lots of ribbon colors, etc. The digital happy birthday banners in my shop are very popular and I think that is because they add a lot of impact to the party decorations.

Here is a step-by-step guide to show you how to put these banners together. For this tutorial I have used the banner from the Sailboat collection to spell out the name Asher. A name can be added to any of the digital collections for an additional $5 (up to 10 letters).  The grosgrain ribbon is orange, spring moss (green), blue and lemonade.

The first thing you’ll want to do is get your supplies together:

Paper slicer

Black card stock

3/8 inch grosgrain ribbon

Good quality scissors

Adhesive (photo splits)

Printed banner sheets

Cutting mat or ruler

Hole punch

If you want rounded corners then it helps to have a corner-round punch. This isn’t essential though. The banner looks great with 90 degree corners or you could always do the rounded corners by hand using your scissors.

Tools you'll need

Cut your grosgrain ribbon to 8 3/4 inches. If you plan on using the banner for years to come, then you’ll want to treat the ends of your ribbon to prevent them from fraying- either pick up some Fray Check at the craft store or burn the ends.

Cut the ribbon to 8 3/4 inches

When you print your banner sheets, it is important to have your printer set to high/good quality (not draft!) and also use bright white heavy paper. I like to use 110 lb card stock. This is available at office supply stores such as Staples or Office Depot.
Use your paper slicer to cut the printed sheets into squares.

Cut into squares

Square letters

Once you’ve cut all the letters into squares, you can round the corners. Of course, this is totally optional and depends on the look you are wanting!

Use punch to round the corners

Choose square or 90 degree corners

Rounded corners

The next step is to cut your black card stock into 5 1/2 inch squares. You’ll be backing the letter squares onto this card stock. It is important to back to the letter squares so that your banner will be sturdy. If you rounded the corners for your letter squares then you’ll want to do this again for the black card stock squares.

Black card stock squares

Apply adhesive to the back of the letter squares. When you stick the letter square on your black square, make sure it is in the center so that you have a nice even border all the way around.

Apply adhesive

Stick letter in the center

Back all the letters

Now you are ready to punch holes in the corners of the squares. Make sure the holes on each side are uniform- you want the holes to be the same distance from the top of the card stock and from the sides. I like to spend a couple minutes making a hole template.

Make hole template

Once you’ve made your template, you need to mark where your left and right holes are going to be located. Do this by marking the letter squares on each side as show in the photos.

Hole template

Mark left hole mark

Move template to the right

Mark right hole

Punch holes

Now that all your holes are punch, you can start the fun part- pulling the ribbon between the holes of two adjoining letters and knotting the ribbon!

Thread ribbon through holes

Knot ribbon

When you knot the ribbon, make sure it is not too tight or that the letter square are overlapping. You need the knots to be somewhat loose so that you can fold your finished banner.

Continue to tie all the ribbon together.

Tie all the ribbon

When you get to the end letters (in this case, a sailboat and the letter R), you want your ribbon to be longer. The length of this ribbon will depend on what you’ll be tying the ribbon to. The banners I make have between 24 and 30 inches of ribbon at the ends.

End ribbon

Tie ribbon to the letter square

Et voila! Your banner is finished and ready to display!

Finished banner

When you are not using the banner, you can fold it (like an accordion) and use the long end ribbons to hold it together.

Fold banner when not in use

If you are feeling less than crafty then check out the ready-to-ship banners that I have in the store or contact me and I can print, cut, back, glue and hand-tie one of the digital banners for you!