Diva Party

As you may know, I've been away from the blogging world for a while. Had my brain been working, I would have taken some step-by-step pictures of this party that I'm posting. As is, all I can show you is the finished product but we loved it all and with a little creativity and some walk-throughs, you'll be able to recreate as much or as little of it as you want.

About a year ago, one of my husband's old co-workers contacted me about doing her daughter's birthday party. She had seen the Minnie Mouse party I had planned for another friend and the Dr. Seuss party (future post coming!) that I had planned for my daughter. After a few conversations about theme's we finally nailed down a Diva! theme. She wanted the party to be hot pink and zebra and [as any first birthday should be] focused around the birthday girl.
Here is what we created for the invitations:

The birthday mom special ordered the shiny pink envelopes and matching pink paper however, there is no reason these couldn't be done after a quick run to Michael's or Hobby Lobby. I think the invites are pretty self explanatory, however if you have questions, feel free to ask. Did you notice the matching address labels? If you're computer savvy and know how to do the label sheets, these should be a breeze. However, if you're like me and only half of your labels ever line up on the sheets and are usable, I'll let you in on a secret: Word.
I found a zebra print on Google and saved it to my computer. Then I opened up Microsoft Word and inserted the picture; cropped it down to size and then copy and pasted until it filled up the page. Then, I added a pink box (insert, shapes) and then I added a text box (insert, text box, draw text box). Finally, I printed them out onto shipping sheets (these are full sticker sheets) and cut the labels out and stuck them to the envelopes.

Now for some of the decorations:
For the zebra print bowls, we bought cheap ($1 I believe) plastic bowls from Hobby Lobby and used Cricut Vinyl. Cut the vinyl into jagged strips and attach to bowl. An added bonus, if you already have some black vinyl or know someone who would, this can be done with scrap pieces.

 For the silverware, we purchased coordinating colors of utensils and napkins. I took the zebra print image I had saved, filled an entire document in Word with it and printed it out. Cut it into strips and using glue dots, wrapped the silverware. It helps that I have waitress experience and was able to fly through this!

 I can't tell you how this hat was made because the birthday mom made it. From the looks of it, I'd say she found a piece of zebra scrapbook paper (you can use either plan print but I think this was textured), rolled it into a cone and trimmed the excess. She cut small pieces of tulle and attached it to the hat...presumably with hot glue.

 Somewhere, on some random website while looking for party ideas, we had seen a circular, styrofoam wreath, trimmed to make a number and decorated similar to this. For the life of me, I can't remember where we saw it and I have since erased all of my party board notes. My issue was going to be making the #1 out of a wreath. I had no idea how I was going to do it! Until, while constructing the cupcake tower, inspiration struck. In the end, I used foam board and did a rough outline of a "1" and very carelessly cut through it with an exacto knife. If you don't know, this makes a very messy board...jagged cuts and messy lines. Normally I'm a perfectionist but I knew that once it was covered, no one would notice.All you do is fold the cupcake wrappers in half, roll, and hot glue. Because I had the jagged, messy edges of the foam board, and because I'm a perfectionist, once the board was filled with cupcake wrappers, I glued pink ribbon around the edge to give it a polished look.

 These were the centerpieces for the tables. Again, I can't tell you exactly how this was created because this was all the birthday mom. What I do know is that she bought the vases at the dollar store, created the large tissue flowers and attached a scrapbook embellishment so that it hung down in the vase. Wrap a little bit of coordinating paper and ribbon around the bottom and voila! Cute, easy, and cheap centerpieces. I think these would look equally as cute if you just decided to put a candle in them and skipped the flower.

Now for the water bottles. When my nephew was born 3 years ago, I fooled around with Word and made some simple water bottle labels and candy bar labels. These were nothing fancy. Literally just words printed out on a light blue paper and wrapped over the existing label. Ever since then, I've been waiting for another reason to make some more. I didn't even think about making coordinating water bottles for all of the birthday parties we throw.

Luckily, I found a way to polish them up a bit. Again, I fooled around in Word...inserting the zebra print, adding shapes, images, and text boxes. What makes these a step up from my nephews is that I found a way to make them look like real labels. Again, I printed them out on plain computer paper. But this time, I wrapped packing tape over them. This is great for two reasons: 1) You don't have to mess with glue dots which are somewhat temperamental and sometimes don't want to stick and 2) They look like real labels that you'd probably pay big bucks to have custom made somewhere.*Please not that this does not make them water resistant. If you put these bottles into...oh say, a large bucket of ice to stay cold...after a while, the colors will bleed. Luckily, I found that out at one of MY parties and was expecting it to happen.

 Here are the placemats. Normally I wouldn't spend the extra money on placemats for a party BUT because this was a 1st birthday party, and I love having pictures of the first year of life at 1st birthdays, these made great sense. Again, it's just a Word document, decorated accordingly. Printed them out and then they were put through a laminator.

 And here are the party favors. Sorry for the blurry picture. In the hustle and bustle of the birthday day and getting everything ready, neither of us took a proper picture so all I have is the sample one I took on my phone to show the birthday mom what they looked like.
Cake in a jar! These were super easy to make! I know this will come as a shock but, I used Word to make the zebra labels, printed them out onto the shipping paper, and used a 2" hole punch to cut them out. I layered chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream to create a zebra look on the inside. We bought a "fat quarter" of zebra fabric from Wal-Mart and cut it down to the size of the lid. The fabric was hot glued to the lid just to make it a little easier on me (I made my mom do it!). Then, I spray painted the bands hot pink and once they were dry, screwed them on.

Here are pictures of the party items all pulled together:
We used tulle to create a zebra-ish skirting for the food table.

 The dessert table:
(The cupcake stand is foam boards cut and glued together to make boxes and wrapped in fabric...super cheap!)

 For this table skirt: wrapping paper. That's right, wrapping paper. We just unrolled it and taped it to the tablecloth.

 And, because I was feeling crafty and knew this would go so well with the party, this is my gift to the birthday child. I bought a wooden rocking horse from Michael's (using a 40% off coupon to make it a good bargain), glued patterned scrapbook paper to it and modge-podged it. Then I cut lengths of yarn and tied a knot in the center and hot glued it to make the mane and tail.