Kids' Party Ideas

My seven year old daughter had some friends over last weekend and they soon found a stash of trays and epoxy stickers that I had hoped would have been a well-orchestrated surprise at the next birthday party.  They are all crazy about My Little Pony and Hello Kitty and I had some images that I knew would be great for making pendants and then taking home as part of the party bag.  

So whilst the cat was out of the party bag, making these necklaces kept them quiet, focussed and entertained for a good long while:  

(Incidentally, images of these and other popular characters are all copyrighted and as such you really should not make them up for sale, though I suspect a small bit of making for personal use may be allowed?)  

Next time I won't wait for a birthday - they are all asking to do it again!  But it would be a great crafty activity for a birthday party.   We have plenty of slight seconds that are cheap as chips and perfect for letting the kids loose on their creative adventures.  Get some magnets in also and some superhero images for the boys - they will all enjoy it!  

I mean really, who cares about cutting a perfect circle when the lovely Rainbow Dash is smiling at you?

Back to School!

Things are getting busy here preparing for a new year of school.  For now it's important (in our house at least) to ensure coats and bags will not get lost in the coming year...  So in between getting orders ready we have been doing a bit of quick crafting.  Starting with a little someone's lunch box...

And her coat...

And for her friend's book bag,

And another friend's sports bag.  Difficult to see, but we chose a basketball background here.

All were made super-easily in a matter of minutes using a few images overwritten with text using Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop and are struggling to tweak your images, we have discovered a free system that covers more than all the basics (woohoo, layers!!)  Try it, it's called Paint.net and is available to download from CNET here.

You can use most smooth papers here, and most inks (however felt tip inks seem to run after some time, so watch out for that).  The trays are our 18mm silver plated round trays, and we have used epoxy stickers glued onto the tray using just a smidgen of tacky glue.  We have attached the trays to the garment using either our new little ball chains or split rings.

Cool, customisable to your little poppet, and easy enough that they can help to make it.  We can't guarantee that they will sit still for a photo however!