My older child loves pirates. Every year they request a pirate party for their birthday. You would think that putting it together would be a breeze by now since I can just reuse all the elements from last year. But I like to spend a bit of time on the party, so each year I try to improve on something.
This year I improved on the invitation. Here is an invitation I have used in the past:
Overall I like the invitation. It's pretty gender neutral and the blue helped it to seem "younger" if that makes sense. But he's getting older now and I wanted something really seriously pirate-y. After tons of searching on the internet, I settled on a design of my own. Not that I didn't love what's already out there. I saw some killer ones. Here's what I did:
I recently got a Cuttlebug, which is a manual die cutting machine (uses actual dies, not cartridges). I got some textured black cardstock and cut it down to 4.25x5.25. Cut a 1 inch strip of red cardstock for the band, and used the Red Tag alpha to cut the 5 from the same color cardstock.
I cut up some grocery bags for the main part. The ship was a Google find, set to 25% opacity. The font is Freebooter, and I used the Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels One dies to cut it out. I used the largest one, and since I didn't have an adapter at the time, I used a couple sheets of chipboard as shims. I did not try to get the edges of anything real clean. As long as they came away stray fibers were okay in my book. Detail shot below.
And above you can see the stamp I put in the return address portion of the envelope. (I used some spare cream colored envelopes I had laying around.) I didn't have any address labels with my child's name on them, and didn't have time to order or make any. So this was the most appropriate thing I had laying around. The picture below is my supplies...little flower stamp he got in an art kit, two little stamp pads from the same art kit (black & red, how convenient!), and a make-your-own stamp that I used to spell out his name.
Which leads us to branding. Sort of. It's difficult to make everything pirate-y and also match. And look decent. I wanted a skull & crossbones on the eye patches. I thought it would be neat for this to be tied in with other stuff somehow, like the goodie bags. So I looked around for a skull stamp or graphic that I liked. Ultimately I found a good sized one at JoAnns in the dollar stuff near the registers. But I wound up not using it in favor of the stamps I made, because I do need this in different sizes. I found a decent graphic on the internet and with some computer magic, tracing, and cutting, I had what I needed in multiple sizes. Excellent!
Goody bags are something I can't decide on. Every year is different. One year I printed out a template on cardstock, cut them out, taped them together. They were cute, but a LOT of work.
Another year I just bought some loot bags from Party City. I think the third year was just a mishmash of whatever was left over from the first two years, and this year I used my large skull stamp to turn brown lunch sacks into pirate goody bags. They didn't look too shabby!
Party Favors. They are always a work in progress. I tried bookmarks the first year, and I was never able to move them. Now they are for my early reader. They were super cute, though. I just added the full sized image below, rather than go through the trouble of resizing. If you click the image below it should take you to the full size. It printed great. Designs use elements from Pirate Punk (Tammy Kat & Ziggle Scraps, no longer available), and Captain Ducky Duck (Paci & Touch Me, available here.)
Every year I give out eye patches. I still had a dozen of last year's eye patches left - black felt with colorful yarn instead of elastic. Why? My child was scared of elastic until recently, that's why. This year he's not scared of it anymore! So those dozen were reserved for the babies/young toddlers (yarn stays put better than elastic) and I went to work on eye patches for the older kids and adults. Here is the younger child sporting a prototype:
I can't take credit for this awesome design, but what I can take credit for is a change in the way I had been attaching the cord. With the felt I had been tying each side of the yarn to the holes in the eye piece. This time I am stringing the cord through the holes and then tying it to itself. This way if someone needs to shorten the cord or even switch it out for a longer cord altogether they can do that easily. I wore a prototype myself and the cord is not able to be felt on the inside of the eye patch. Couldn't feel the staple, either.
I used thin cardboard (like a cereal box) for the main eye piece. 1/8" holes were punched on either side to string the elastic through. And the elastic you see here is 1/8" wide. I like this design better than felt or foam because it's more rigid and stays off the eye, which was a little bit of a problem last year.
Every year I also give out sashes. These are super easy to make. Get a length of red fabric. cheapest you can is fine, remnants are fine. Leave the width alone (should be 44"+) but along the other side cut a little slit about 4" in. Go ahead and continue with a little slit every 4". Then tear at each slit, along the entire width. It will tear in a straight line and the unfinished edge looks just fine on a pirate. It's okay if it's a little long - kids can wear it long, or you can wrap it around their waist twice before tying for the tiny ones. But if you keep them all 44"+ long they will also fit adults, so you won't have to worry about having two sizes and the right number of each.
This year I decided that a game to take home would be fun - Pirate Charades. I found a good digital scrapbooking pirate themed kit (Jamie Dell Scraps, Pirate Booty) and used some of those elements along with clipart to make a pirate game. You can see some of them below. There are 16 cards in the deck, printed on cardstock, laminated, cut apart, and run through the laminator again just to seal the edges. How to play: spread the deck out face down. One person picks a card and acts out whatever picture they got. The others have to guess what they are. Whoever guesses right goes next. You could print 2 decks for each guest and then use it as a memory game.
I wrapped them each in a small unfinished (ie torn) length of black fabric 1.5-2" wide. I didn't measure, just tried to make them so that the cloth covered the instructions. And then put a small plain rubber band around the cloth. The font I used is called Freebooter.
Ugh. At this point I realize I put way more effort into this party than planned. Happens every year.
On to decor. Last year I used a blue tablecloth that had a wave pattern to it. This year I wanted red/white/black for the table. I could not find the fabric I wanted (something like this - JoAnns has some in their catalog but you have to special order it) in enough time to order it, so I wound up buying white muslin and black ribbon and sewing the ribbon on. Muslin was 90" wide by 2 yards, folded in half to be 2yds x 45". I tore the edges so they would be raw. Ribbon is 2.5" wide, put shiny side down. I sewed the ribbon to make even stripes, and then I used red fabric (torn) for the runner.
And something new: spyglasses! My husband has apparently been saving toilet paper rolls for a long time. I found his stash and used a sharpie (Magnum) to color them black. Then I bought some self adhesive jewels. As guests arrived they put on their sashes and eye patches, drew on mustaches with an eyeliner pen (new for this party!), and then they got to decorate their scopes with gemstones. A few gemstones may have made it onto eye patches or ears as well.
Buried Treasure. I bought a metal treasure chest from Party City and filled it with some treasures - sparkly Mardi Gras-type necklaces from the thrift store, gold coins, and some gemstones that I originally got from Fire Mountain Gems. The plan was to bury the treasure in the sandbox...other parties got there before us and we were no where near the sandbox. So we had one of the older kids hide the treasure chest while the young ones were occupied, and then they had to hunt around the park to find it.
Island Cake. I had wonderful ideas about this island cake. Specifically, that the bakery would do all the work for me. We are vegan so our bakery choices were somewhat limited (to only one in town) and they said they could not do anything like what I wanted. Which was a tan princess cake with blue marzipan waves around the edges. Not sculpted, just like a border around the bottom. Why marzipan? I don't think fondant is vegan because on their vegan cakes they use marzipan. Why a princess cake? Because my child loves them.
That request just got a flat out "no" from the bakery, so I decided to just get a no-color marzipan princess cake. It's sort of a yellow-y beige. And since the only decorations they *would* do was spray painting I was on my own for decorations as well. We already had little pirate figures to put on top, so my only problem was the palm tree. You would not believe the time I had trying to find a little plastic palm tree! If you see one in your travels, buy it!!
I wound up making my own palm tree, using a toilet paper roll, some green cardstock, some glue, and a few staples. Not too shabby. I used a Simply Orange bottle cap as the base. In case you're wondering, yes I put a candle on it...and the pirate between the candle and the palm tree.
In the past I have done Treasure Islands, which were a great success. An idea born of trying not to let toddlers have frosting, these were coffee cake cupcakes, with palm tree picks I found at Party City.
Ship Brownie Cakes. This was what pulled it all together. The island cake was basically for my son, but around it were lots of ship cupcakes, which were for the guests. They were chocolate brownie cupcakes (see? still avoiding giving kids frosting!) with sails. I used my Spellbinders Labels One dies (the smallest size) to cut the sails, and then I stamped them with black ink using my smaller skull stamp. I poked holes in the top and bottom with a straight pin, and when I was ready to put the cupcakes on display I slipped them on a toothpick and the toothpick into the cupcake. (I kept the toothpicks separate from the sails until I was ready to display, because they don't really fit in the cupcake carrier with sails and I didn't want to contaminate the toothpick ends accidentally.)
You may have noticed the Food Labels I made. This way it's totally obvious that things are themed without me having to go to extremes. I am not making tiny edible eye patches for the strawberries, thank you very much. Here's the exact file I used to print the labels:
