The first craft I did was the invitations! I used the "card" function on the Mini Monster cartridge, which made any monster into a two-fold card! For the paper, I used the cricut-brand 6X12 Rainbow paper stack to make these little guys - half green, half orange! I printed the inside poem on glossy photo paper (it always looks nicer!) and adhered it with glue. The monsters' bellies seemed bare, so I added a monogram "H" for my son's name. Lastly, I loaded each invite into a clear cellphone envelope! I just loved the idea of these little guys floating through the mail system!
Having had so much fun making the cards, I knew I wanted a bunch of little monsters all around the party! I went to Michaels and picked out a bunch of 12x12 solid card stock: four shades of each of my four colors. Although the multi-colored invitations were fun, I really wanted each mini monster to be monochromatic! With my colored papers in hand, I picked four different monsters from the cartridge that 1) I loved, and 2) had relatively few "pieces." These came together really quick, and were so much fun to stare at during my weeks of prep time...I felt like I had company back in my craft room!
HINT: to cut down on the cutting and gluing, I used googley-eyes for all the eyes (purchased as the Dollar Store!). Major time saver! With the rest of my card stock, I used the Doodletype cartage to make the Happy Birthday banner letters and the Mini Monograms cartridge to cut the circles.
As I was cutting out all my monsters, I went ahead and cut out three big number 1s using the Letter Envy cartridge. I used red since I was using the other 3 colors a lot more, and these would then stand out. Each "one" was about 8" tall. One was attached to the pinwheel outside the house, one to the highchair banner, and one in the top of the cake! (By the way, all the monsters (big and small) and the numbers were all cut in one sitting - in order to be efficient, I had planned out ahead of time what was going to be cut from what color, etc! The gluing of everything was then done in another sitting. All in all, the paper stuff came together super fast thanks to the cricut!).
I've been seeing lots of tissue paper poofs on blogs and Pinterest lately, and knew they were just the ticket for bringing my party display to life! Paper poofs seem to be pretty hot right now in general, not only in parties but also in bedrooms and nurseries! I understand why! They are SO eye-catching, and SUPER easy and cheep to make! They completely brought my party display to life. I can't get myself to take them down...I just love them! Just a note to readers out there who may not be uber crafty..."they" sell tissue paper poof "kits" - but really, these are SO incredibly simple - anyone can do them! Save yourself the money of the kit, buy a 99 cent package of tissue paper - I promise you can do these yourself!
I was recently at a party where the hostess had some adorable flower arrangements made out of a few dried flowers and sparkly doodads! I tucked the picture in the back of my brain, and was super excited to do something similar for this party! These were just as much fun to shop for as to make. In case you're wondering, here's where I got all my supplies! Tall Green Metal Vases - Target Dollar Spot (but they were $2.50)Striped Flowers (orange, blue, green) - Hobby Lobby ($2.00 a stem on sale)Sparkly Doo-dads (orange, blue, green) - Hobby Lobby ($2.50 a stem on sale)Florist Styrofoam - Dollar Store ($1 for a package of 3)Paper Grass (blue) - Michaels (~$3)The monsters were sprinkled throughout the party space to really bring the theme to life! They were easily one of my favorite projects from the whole party, just because they were so darn cute!
There were lots of other crafts and projects! You can see all the details here: http://thehomesihavemade.blogspot.com/
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