alice in wonderland party bags and favours

I made these necklaces as favours for Cyan’s Alice in Wonderland birthday party. I found the coloured aluminium chain when I was buying the charms for Oliver’s pirate dalek party. I had lots of the little key charms left over, I then found little gold heart charms – but I was having trouble finding the right charms for each necklace.

The cute little acrylic faceted teapots in all the same colours as the chains were a lucky find on ebay the week before the party! I love how they look with the chains. The necklaces fasten with a heart shaped clasp..

I was going to make some charms with pictures on, using Michele’s tutorial here using printing onto tissue paper and mod podge, my first try didn’t quite work out as I hoped, and I just didn’t have the time to do more trials. I will be playing around with this idea again though..



The party bags are made from different colours of gingham, with coordinated grosgrain ribbon handles; and a shaped felt pocket for each character. Featuring..

Alice



The Mad Hatter



The Queen of Hearts



The Cheshire Cat



The White Rabbit



The Caterpillar



I made the heart and cat bag styles back in July for the felt week of CraftShare 2010 at Sew Can Do..

The stickers I designed for each character were included.. (Thanks moo!)

 

And I made up colouring books – also using the John Tenniel illustrations..



Sadly I ran out of time to make the heart shaped crayons I was planning to do, luckily I had bought these cute mini gel pens as a back-up.

Shutter Love Tuesdays @ Trendy Treehouse – Cyan as Alice

I haven’t taken part in Trendy Treehouse’s Shutter Love Tuesdays in a while, when I saw this week’s theme is Blue I immediately thought of this photo..

This is a photo I took of Cyan (named for the colour – blue) dressed as Alice in Wonderland (blue dress) back in June, when I had just finished her pinny to complete her Alice outfit.

This is one of my most favourite photos of Cyan, I tweaked it a little for Shutter Love to enhance the blues.. See the original photos here..

cyan in wonderland birthday party

Yesterday we held Cyan’s mad birthday tea party..

More on the party food and tiered vintage china cake stands here..

We had some fun Alice themed games and activities here..

See the invitations here.. stickers for favours here.. party bags and favours here..

















We even had a little caterpillar visitor who was happily munching on my mint.. if only he was blue..



The Eat Me birthday cake..







.. with a surprise inside! (and another surprise when you eat it – the blue marbled cake layer is mint flavoured and the red marbled cake layer is strawberry flavoured, the white icing square on top is also minty – unusual and very tasty!)



We made garlands from playing cards to decorate our yard..



And we had a couple of white rabbits to follow up to our front door as promised in the invitations.. I had planned to do full rabbit cutouts but I ran out of time, and my Mum kindly cut these out in the shape of the white rabbit pockets on the party bags (which she also helped me out on by sewing most of them), Cyan drew the faces on..



See our fun Alice themed games and activities here..

All in all it was a wonderful day, I myself enjoyed it immensely (despite only getting two hours sleep the night before – utter madness I know!), Cyan had the best day and informed me today she wants exactly the same party next year! (I’m sure she’ll change her mind a gazillion times before then) and I’m pretty sure all her friends had a blast. Once again huge thanks to my Mum and Karl without whose help I could not make any of this happen.

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alice in wonderland party games

We had some fun games and activities on an Alice in Wonderland theme for Cyan’s birthday party..

Pass the teapot – I adapted the idea from The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at Anthony House we attended earlier this year.. They passed a teapot around and when the music stopped the child holding the teapot was given a jam tart. For our version I put a prize (a cute Alice charm bracelet I made – but forgot to photograph!) inside our teapot, which was taped shut, and then the teapot was wrapped in layers of paper – so it was more like traditional pass the parcel..



Flamingo bingo – again adapted from a game played at Anthony House – picture bingo with pictures from Alice in Wonderland.. I added numbers 1-20 to the pictures and used Oliver’s bingo game to pick the numbers, when the kids had crossed off all their numbers/pictures they had to shout “flamingo!” then pick a prize..



Then we had Painting the roses red. My youngest sister Jinni kindly helped me out last week by making up all the [white] paper roses using this tutorial. I was dressed as the Queen of Hearts for the party, and I informed the kids that somebody had picked me white roses in error and they must all be painted red or it would be off with their heads! Not really of course! They all got into the spirit of it and took great delight in presenting me with their painted roses!



We put the roses outside to dry in what was left of the sunshine, so they could take them home with them at the end of the party..



They also played musical chairs which I didn’t photograph..

I realised today we didn’t get a single picture with me at the party, so I had to dress up again (Cyan was already wearing her Alice dress again!) so we could get a picture..



My only real disappointment was another activity I had planned but ran out of time to prepare – which was going to be making mad hats. I had saved a whole variety of yoghurt etc. pots which I was going to add card brims to make into hats and spray paint them as a base for the kids to decorate as they saw fit. This would have been a lot of fun..

One of Cyan’s friends gave her a balloon modelling kit as a gift, and Karl did end up making balloon hats for some of the kids – so at least there were mad hats of a sort!

tiered cake stands from vintage china and party food

I made these tiered cake stands for Cyan’s Alice in Wonderland birthday tea party from a collection of vintage china teacups, plates and saucers. Some pieces I already had, I bought a couple of lots on ebay and the rest were found in charity shops.

I was inspired by this one made by Anji (yes – the same name as me!) of multi-purpose wings, the first time I had seen this idea. I used my hot glue gun to stick them together so it should be possible to take them apart later, as per this very helpful tutorial from Sherry of Creations From My Heart. Actually I am so pleased with them, I don’t know if I want to take them apart now! Not sure what else to do with them though..?

Here they are in action..



Filled with sweet treats..



Cupcakes with toppers I designed..



Jammie dodgers, jam tarts (pastry by my Mum and baked by Karl), and mini jammie dodgers.. grapes and mini marshmallows on sticks in a sugar bowl..



More cupcakes, marshmallows and marshmallow mushrooms; and the two-tiered stands in-between held sandwiches and carrot and cucumber flowers..





We had mismatched vintage china teacups and saucers for the kids to drink out of – which they loved – and not a single thing got broken!



Tea was served (apple juice tea or orange juice tea!) in two little teapots from our play tea-sets..



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wonderland party favours sticker designs

I designed some more moo stickers on a Wonderland theme.. The stickers we had for Oliver’s party favours turned out so well, I had to do some for Cyan’s party too..

I spent many hours colouring up more of the original illustrations by John Tenniel, like the ones I did for the invitations.. There are six sets of designs, with six stickers on each sheet. These correspond to the six characters I have designed the party bags around – the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit, Alice, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat & the Mad Hatter..

I think my favourite is the Queen of Hearts.. Off with their heads!













The icon designs with the coloured gingham backgrounds relate to the party bags..

Oliver’s favourites are the Cheshire Cats, the Caterpillar and the Rocking horse fly designs..

Cyan’s favourite is the Don’t be late! one with the White Rabbit looking at his watch.. she was fascinated watching me add colour to the illustrations in Photoshop, and wanted to have a go..

I set her up a file with the layers she would need, then I showed her how to pick the colour she wanted to paint with, and to use the ‘E’ for Erase key to swap to the Erase tool if she needed to erase an area, and then to hit the ‘B’ for Brush key to swap back to the brush tool.

Here is Cyan’s White Rabbit, she’s not quite finished with it yet, but he’s looking great..

cyan in wonderland birthday party invitations

I finally got the invitations done for Cyan’s birthday party.. I know, I know – her birthday was two weeks ago.. We had planned to delay her party anyway as she was starting school for the first time last week, so that she could invite new and old friends..



We decided months ago that Cyan was going to have an Alice in Wonderland themed party, a no-brainer considering our Alice craze this year.. I also decided months ago that I would use the original book illustrations by John Tenniel when I found out (after seeing them used in some art on Etsy) that due to their age they are in the public domain, and safe to use. I love these illustrations, they are magical and of a different time..

The illustration above is possibly my favourite of all the Tenniel Alice illustrations, with Alice looking over her shoulder at the White Rabbit hurrying off down the corridor, I love the composition and the perspective.. I thought it would be perfect on the front, with the script Follow the White Rabbit...

I thought we could cut some rabbit shapes from white card for the party, and fix them to the walls outside our house, so they actually do follow the White Rabbit to the party.. Cyan likes this idea..



I like party invitations which are folded, that you ‘open’ like a card, and I also like to offer guests the choice of RSVP via phone/email or a reply slip.. I wanted the proportions of these invitations to be more like a book than the other square format invitations I have designed before, and to almost tell a story..

Inside.. You’re invited to A Mad Tea Party! To celebrate Cyan’s 5th birthday
(notice not A Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – true to the book).



Don’t be late! The RSVP flap folds down to reveal the time/date/place, and doubles as a tear-off reply slip.. (address edited for this pic – we don’t actually live on Wonderland Road.. I wonder if there is one?)



The back is finished off with the illustration of Alice and the Cheshire Cat and the legend Cyan in Wonderland (I couldn’t resist!) I also repeated our phone number here for those who may need to call after having returned the reply slip..

I am really pleased with the vintage look and feel of these invites, I used just a little muted colour to pick out the characters in the illustrations..

Onto the rest of the party preparation now.. Among other things I have to make up the other party bag designs, you may remember I prototyped my idea for the Queen of Hearts and Cheshire Cat party bags for Craftshare back in July..

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