dinosaur party hats and alice in wonderland featured

I am so happy and proud – I got featured! Three times this week!
Big thank yous go to Melissa from those northern skies who featured the Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland costumes I made for my kids in her friday creative high party, and to Ela from life in my pjs who also featured them from her 1st wednesday pajama party! These are two new and fabulous link parties, I love their blogs too ..



I recently signed up to all the email newsletters from Etsy .. then this evening I was reading the latest Etsy Finds email which I got today, titled Etsy Finds: Craft Party .. so I’m scrolling down looking at all the fantastic crafty party goodies .. I literally leapt off the sofa in amazement when I saw my dinosaur party hats in there!!



I haven’t blogged about these hats yet .. I will soon .. I invented them for Oliver’s dinosaur themed 5th birthday party ..

You can find the dinosaur hats in my Etsy shop as PDF templates or as a crafty pre-cut kit with stickers and colouring sheets all included!

Here are Oliver and Cyan modeling two of the dinosaur hats:

dinosaur crayons party favors

I have made lots of these recently :


from a lot of these :


I made lots of these dinosaur shaped crayons over the last few weeks for some Etsy custom orders. I recently purchased a new mold to make the dinosaur crayons, made of silicone – much better than my old plastic chocolate mold. I can use the new one in the oven which is so much easier when making crayons, it also allows me to make multicolour crayons which are much more fun, especially for party favors. I make each crayon with 2 or 3 colour layers.

I had to take a shot of all the crayon paper wrappers because they look so pretty! and I hate to throw anything away, so I am trying to think of a way to recycle these .. paper maché .. handmade paper .. ? Any ideas/suggestions welcome ..
(removing these is the worst part of making crayons – luckily for me I have a little helper who loves to peel!)



I love making these! I am buying in a whole variety of new molds so I can make different shaped crayons to go with all the other party themes I’m working on ..



Here are the crayons with our dinosaur coloring book and fabric party/gift bag :



You can buy them in my Etsy shop ..

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dinosaur bunting flags

This is a dinosaur pennant banner / bunting I made as a thank you for my very first Etsy order. It is personalised with the birthday boy’s name and coordinates with the party bags I made for his dinosaur party. I actually decided to make it because I had some off-cuts of fabric left over from making the party bags, just right to make bunting.

I have never made bunting before, and I am so pleased with how it turned out. I need to make more with Oliver’s name on for his bedroom, and then of course more with girly prints and Cyan’s name for her room...

I decided not to seam the flag edges for two reasons – well three really I suppose – 1. I wanted to make the most of the off-cuts I had. 2. I thought that seams might make the edges too bulky. 3. easier to make without seams! Not sure if it actually is easier, but I like how it looks anyway.

I used green cotton and Bondaweb iron-on adhesive for the letters, dinosaur prints with green gingham backing for the flags (also fixed with Bondaweb). I top-stitched the letters and flags with brown thread to match the fabulous green and brown saddle-stitch grosgrain ribbon which the flags hang from.




Dinosaur party goods are available in my Etsy shop, maybe even bunting too – one day soon!

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dinosaur coloring puzzle books

I designed these dinosaur coloring books as party favors to go in the dinosaur fabric party bags I made for Oliver’s dinosaur themed birthday party, using vector outline versions of Karl’s dinosaur illustrations, these coordinate with the invitations which use coloured versions of the same dinosaur illustrations.

The books are full of puzzles including dot-to-dot, word search, odd one out, two the same, spot the difference, maze, match dino footprints… There are pages with dinosaurs to colour, and puzzle pages can be coloured too for maximum colouring enjoyment!

I’ve just made up 25 dinosaur coloring books which are to go with the 25 party bags for my first Etsy order. I have given them a new look by printing the inner pages on mixed pastel paper, the covers are on slightly heavier cream paper stock. The originals were on cream paper throughout. Oliver approves of the new colourful versions! I am also making dinosaur crayons to go with this order.

dinosaur fabric party bags

I love fabric party bags – they look great, are tactile, eco-friendly, last for ages and kids love them!

For my son Oliver’s dinosaur themed birthday party I sourced a lovely variety of different dinosaur print cotton fabrics to mix up and make the party bags. I also found fabulous dinosaur printed grosgrain ribbon perfect for the handles.

They were really quite simple to make; what worked really well was double-folding and stitching the top hem and handles, this makes them really sturdy – they have lasted two years now and still going strong! I have just this week made another 25 party bags for my very first Etsy order – very exciting! This also gave me the opportunity to take some photos of the construction process:





You can make these bags to fit any party theme, by varying the fabric and ribbon. If you’re planning a child’s birthday party why not have fabulous fabric party bags as a long lasting keepsake for your guests.

I have dinosaur fabric party bags listed in my Etsy shop along with other coordinated custom/personalized dinosaur party supplies – perfect for a dinosaur birthday party theme.

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dinosaur party invitations

I created these dinosaur invitations for Oliver’s dinosaur themed birthday party using my vectorised and coloured up versions of Karl’s dinosaur illustrations. The dinos are lively and full of character so I settled on a fairly simple design which showcased the dinosaur illustrations and with all the party information clearly presented.

I searched online for some ideas to dinosaurise the wording; I can’t remember if this is when we started calling Oli “Oliversaurus Rex” or if it was earlier (his middle name is Rex). He still gets called “Oliversaurus Rex” sometimes! The other line I found which I liked was “Don’t be extinct” which I used on the reply slip and where the phone number is repeated on the back.

I printed the invites in colour onto a nice quality medium weight cream paper stock, then trimmed and tri-folded them, to finished size of 99 x 105 mm (4 x 4.25 " approx). This made them compact and neat – easy for Oli to give out to all his friends. Everyone loved them, I got compliments from parents and Oli’s teacher!



I am now offering these customized/personalized dinosaur invitations to buy in my Etsy shop along with other coordinated custom/personalized dinosaur party supplies – perfect for a dinosaur birthday party theme.

dawn of the dinosaurs

We just had to have a dinosaur themed party for my son Oliver’s 5th birthday, the boy is mad on dinosaurs! So that meant dinosaur invitations to design, dinosaur party bags to make and fill with dino goodies; and fun dinosaur games and activities to plan!

As his birthday is in August the party was in the summer holiday so invitations had to be given out well in advance, before the end of term.
I commissioned some dinosaur illustrations from my talented artistic partner, Karl. I wanted five dinosaurs ’cause it was his 5th birthday.
The boy’s fave dinosaurs at the time were T-Rex, Spinosaurus and Brachiosaurus so they had to feature. My personal favourite dino is Stegosaurus and Triceratops seemed the obvious fifth.

Karl did rough sketches of the dinosaurs (he didn’t get to refine and paint them – much to his disappointment) which I scanned in to the Mac ready for tracing. I knew I needed to vectorise these as I already had ideas forming for other things I wanted to do with them. So I traced them into vector outlines in Illustrator and then coloured them up ready to be used on the invitations.