Miss Mary Mack Themed Birthday Party

E turned two! Feels like just yesterday I was posting E's first birthday party pictures and now she is two! The very first poem e learned this year was Miss Mary Mack, so what better theme to choose for her birthday party than her favourite nursery rhyme. I have so many pictures to post for her birthday party that I think this is going to be the world's biggest post ever! I promise to keep my writing to the minimum and talk more with pictures, which is more interesting always. Miss Mary Mack goes to the carnival to see the elephants jump over the fence, so my idea was to make it a carnival with elephants being the centre of attraction.

It was a beautiful sunny day, with spring just round the corner and it made everything look and feel very cheerful. I wanted to create a very happy fairyland for E and her friends where they can play and enjoy all day long and take home some very happy memories.

E's Birthday banner needed to be something special so I made it by pasting felt letters on burlap and finishing the edges with a bias binding. some tassels on the corners would have looked good as well but I just ran out of time like I always do!

This was the front of E's birthday invitation, I made a collage depicting Miss Mary Mack watching the elephants jump over the fence. I made an enlarged version of the collage for the backdrop of the cake table. This collage is made on a canvas with scrapbook paper.

We were so busy enjoying the party that we didn't get any shots before the party started and the whole place was trashed. This one shows the other side of the backyard where the marquee was and the food was served.

I will be posting the recipe for this delicious dark chocolate fudge separately soon. The cupcakes were carrot and walnut and strawberry flavoured cake pops.

This cake took three days to put together but it was worth the look on E's face when she first saw it. All the while we spoke about her birthday she kept asking me for her cake to blow the candles and when she finally did get to blow them off she was too shy to do so.

 This was everyone's favourite decoration, it is such a simple idea and so effective. So were these transparent umbrellas, which later became photo props!

Miss Mary Mack's elephant's were everywhere from drink bottles to buntings and pinatas. Didn't realise how long it would take to get this shape cut out perfectly and they looked so good that it was worth the effort.

I will post a separate tutorial for this stitched garland, they looked so colourful and bright in the sunshine.

Miss Mary Mack's printouts on the bunting looked very colourful and just apt for a little girl's party.

          
                    The confetti balloons looked really good, they were from poppies for grace.

H has gone through a lot of effort to make gorgeous pieces of furniture for E's elephant dominated birthday party and this is bench is just of them. I absolutely love the craftsmanship on this bench and E proudly says"papa made it" every time she sits on it.

Hope you enjoyed looking at E's party pictures just as much as we enjoyed planning it! It was a such a fun day and so very special for E with all her friends around her to share her happiness xx

DIY Fabric Pinata Elephant

Covering a birthday pinata with tissue paper is very standard and definitely very pretty but I wanted to do something a bit different this year for E's birthday so I covered the pinatas with fabric instead. Well, it was a much quicker way to to have a fabric elephant which is neither sewn nor stuffed and I could use all the gorgeous printed fabrics I had left over from my old projects. E is still too young to pull a pinata or beat the life out of it without getting hurt and neither would the parents appreciate their two years old stuffing their faces with lollies, so I didn't make a working pinata but just used a few of them as decoration all around the party. They are really simple but a bit time consuming to make, well maybe a bit less time consuming as compared to adding tissue paper fringes.

These looked even better than the pictures trust me as the fabric gives them more brightness and texture than any paper could have and also the fabric drapes well around the shape.

You will need:

• Card board sheets preferably the size you want your pinata to be.
• masking tape or any wide sticky tape
• craft glue
• fabric strips
• upholstery needle and thread or string

I haven't been able to get many pictures for the instructions but they are pretty simple steps to follow.

• Cut out two cardboards in the shape you want your pinata, I wanted to make an elephant.
• Now cut out some strips from your card board of the thickness you want your pinata to be, I used 3 inch wide card board strips.
• Start adding the cardboard strips between the two elephant cut outs and stick them with sticky tape. Some curves and corners might be a bit hard to reach so use smaller strips or pieces of card board to cover those areas. 
• Your pinata should look something like the pictures below.

• Now all you need to do is paste the fabric strips all over your pinata in any pattern you like. I used different prints in horizontal pattern and covered the pinata.
• Some curves like the trunk and in between both the legs didn't really come out very neat but it still looked good all in all.
• Use a long upholstery needle to pass a string or thread through the top of the pinata and it is ready to hang.
• Fill in the lollies before closing the pinata and covering it with fabric if you want a functional one.

You can use any colour fabric plain or printed and make them matching to your colour scheme. Don't they look grand and very crafty with now sewing at all.

DIY Fascinating Fancy Paper Lanterns

There is so much that can be done with paper lanterns and there are many ideas floating around the web which are very creative. I wanted to use the paper lanterns as is for their colours but still needed to enhance them a bit more. since I used them for a day time party we couldn't add a light inside the lamps as it was a very sunny day. Paper lanterns are easily available at any dollar store and are very easy to assemble. I have added fringes and decorated them for other parties but this year I added some fancy decorations to it so that they hanged even lower and looked even colourful. I added some pom poms and paper flags on a string as well as some tissue paper strips to them and this is how my paper lanterns looked in the bright sunlight with cool breeze, beginning of spring!

These are some Japanese paper lanterns, they are beautifully printed and some of them have print and striped panels. I just loved the patterns and colours and the size was much more bigger and more impressive to say the least.

Using two colour papers in one pom pom gives it a new look and makes it more interesting. These are Martha Stewart pom poms which I made using these instructions, just in smaller size which made them look like delicate flowers.

Using very small square pieces of coloured printed paper I made this small bunting which I hung vertically down from the lantern. It is very simple just fold small square pieces of paper and glue them together on a cotton string or thread. Glue stick doesn't hold so it's best to use a good quality craft glue.

I found these beautiful stripe printed tissue paper which I used in most of the decorations. Here I cut them into thin strips and hung them below the lanterns as well as used them to make small pom poms as well. since the lantern itself is solid colour, I added the prints and stripes through the paper on the pom poms and flags.

Here is a closer look at the bunting it is made from around 3 cm/3 cms square pieces of paper on a cotton thread.

On some lamps I added two pom poms made from striped tissue paper in different colours. They did get entangled when they were hung but still looked very pretty.

To attach the strips of paper I just used some sticky tape, folded the strips on the wire frame and then used sticky tape to secure them in place. For the bunting and pompoms I simply tied and them to the wire frame of the lantern.

For the printed lanterns I used gold and silver foil paper and cut them in thin strips to hang them on the wire frame of the lanterns and added plain coloured pom poms.

I am very happy with how these paper lanterns turned out and all I did was started adding decorations to the wire frame and started creating along the way. I'm sure you can come up with some more variations and I would love to see some pictures of your work x