The Pirate Party - Fun Craft Ideas!

If you are hosting a Pirate Party for your little ones big day, a great activity to keep the guests entertained is crafts!  Not only does it let everyone get involved, children of all ages, boys and girls, get to take home something they are proud of, and add a competition for the 'most sparkling treasure chest', or for the 'ugliest pirate mask' are fun and light hearted.  Read on for some fab ideas:

Homemade Treasure Chest

• You will need: paint, craft glue, egg cartons, beads, sequins, coloured feathers, novelty jewellery,  gold chocolate coins
• Give each child an egg carton and tell them to paint their pirate treasure chest! You could try doing this at the beginning of the party while guests are still arriving as an ice breaker, and to allow time for the cartons to dry while you run other activities.
• After the egg cartons are dry, tell the children to decorate and fill up their treasure chest! Stick gold coins, novelty necklaces and rings, feathers, sequins and sparkles to make it as tantalising as possible!
• Put the finished treasure chests on display for the children to proudly show off their creativity!

Pirate Mask 

• You will need: paper plates, craft paint, stick on goggley eyes, felt tip pens, material for a bandana, craft glue, stick on eyebrows, glitter pens, sequins, thick cardboard cut into rectangles (to make into handles)
• Give each child a paper plate and tell them they are going to make a pirate face! They can opt for ugly, scary, funny, silly or even a pretty pirate and they can use the items supplied.  This will keep them well amused but parents will have to be on stand by to help with the tricky bits such as sticking on material bandanas and cutting things out.
• Once all the children have finished their masks, award the best (or worst!) ones with a prize!
• Get the children all together to take some hilarious snaps of them holding their masks in front of their faces.

** If you are planning a Pirate Party for your child's next Birthday Party and live in London, Hampshire or Surrey, contact www.onceuponatimeparties-london.co.uk and we will do are best to get one of our Pirate friends to sail to your venue and teach some new Pirates how to have fun!!

info@onceuponatimeparties-london.co.uk

Or call Emma on 07969 841770

The Fairy Party - Take Home Gift

After all the carefully worded invites, the tastefully decorated party venue, the (hopefully) tastier food and the entertainment itself there is just one more hurdle to cross - the take home gift!

Now it is very very easy to go to a local party or pound store and stock up on plastic yoyo's, toys and other 5 minute wonders, but why not finish off the party in style with some of my top fairy party take home gifts:

1) Pop to your local Claire's accessories and pick out some child friendly pretty pastel nail polishes for each of the children.  Add to this a homemade glitter dust vial and this is a fantastically fairy way to polish off the party!  (Tip: See my earlier blog post on how to make a glitter dust pouch!)

2) For a magical way to end the party, give each child some fairy wings and a wand to take home!

3) For a really personalised memory of the day, take a picture of each guest with the birthday child when they arrive at the party (or a big group one!) and get them developed whilst the party is taking place.  Put each one in a pink or sparkly photo frame and send them home with a lasting memory.

4) Another personalised present, as well as a great way to get the birthday child involved prior to the party, is to make homemade jewellery.

• You will need the following: ribbon or thread, beads with letters, colourful beads.
• Simply pierce the beads through the ribbon or thread to spell the name of each guest. Be sure to add pretty coloured and shaped beads and gems to the bracelet and tie a know at each end to secure the beads.  Ensure that there is enough ribbon / thread left over to tie the bracelet into a bow on the child's wrist.

5) Send home each child with a fairy book (Flower Fairies, Tinkerbell, Peter Pan etc). You can find many great deals on websites such as amazon, and the parents will be grateful that you are not sending them home with a bag of 'E' numbers but a good excuse for a lovely bed time story.

I hope you will find these take home gift ideas useful and I would love to hear some of your ideas to!

Please keep reading my blog as the next theme I am going to cover is Pirate and Mermaid Parties! 

Once Upon A Time Parties x

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Cheap Party Idea and Take Home Gift for Older Kid's

Wouldn't it be nice if children could stay at those magical ages of 5 and 6, where they are easily pleased by traditional parties and everything is exciting and new for them... But sadly they don't, so you  have to get more creative. Here is a party idea for slightly older children (7+) which should keep them well entertained and best of all, combines the entertainment AND the party food!

I am talking about a cooking party!

There seems to be a bit of a trend for baking and making at the moment, but for a fun party I would recommend keeping it simple - we are talking more decorating rather than flambéing!  Personally, I would opt for pizza and cupcakes, as both pizza bases and cupcake bases are easy to buy and would suit a tight budget.  

For the pizza you will need the following:

- Pizza bases

- Sprinkling cheese

- A large variety of vegetables

- Tomato pizza sauce

- Tuna

- Olives

- Different meats

- Onion

- Whatever else you can think of!

For the cupcakes you will need:

- Plain individual sponge cakes

- Frosting

- Edible glitter

- Sweets (dolly mix, jelly tots)

- Edible decorations - go to any baking section in a supermarket!

And then let the children create their own foodie masterpieces, encouraging them to add their favourite ingredients to the pizzas and cupcakes and challenging them to make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible! 

While the pizza's are baking, you can play some party games with them, or send them on a scavenger hunt around the garden or your house (or both!), and then sit down to a lovely party tea.

A great idea for a take home gift that goes well with the cooking theme is a home-made recipe book.  Put together some yummy and simple recipes that children can make with their parents. Google or check out my next blog for some great ideas.  Get the birthday child to design the front page and then copy and print your pages and bind them, staple them take them to a copy shop to get them bound professionally.  

For some great recipe ideas to put in your cook book, check out my next few blogs!

For some great scavenger hunt ideas, keep reading my Once Upon A Time Parties Blog!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x

Glittery Take Home Gift

A child's Birthday Party is never complete without a take home gift or party bag and is something that finishes the party off wonderfully and can be a lovely reminder of the party.

However, all to often these party bags are full of expensive tat that serve as a 5 minute wonder to the children and an extra expense to the mum and dad.  A lovely idea which is particularly effective at fairy and princess party themes is take home fairy dust.

All you need for this is: 

• Vials with a lid, jar or a drawstring bag (small sizes - think Tinkerbell sized!)
• Different coloured glitters. Craft stores will stock these in abundance and they are cheap!
• Sequins
• Dried flowers
• Ribbon
• Labels or tags

Step one: Fill the vial with different coloured glitters, sequins and dried flowers such as little roses.

Step two: After putting the lid on securely, tie a ribbon around the neck of the vial. Again, craft shops will stock pretty ribbons of all colours.

Step 3: Put a label, or cut out some fancy shaped tags using card and write the party and the name of the child who will take home this particular gift.

Et voilà! A simple, cheap but pretty and sweet take home gift.

Another idea that works really well with slightly older children (6+\) is to set out a fairy dust making station at the beginning of the party and get them to fill their own vial with glitters and sequins, much like a coloured sand activity.  To get the glitter into the vial with the least amount of mess, use a long thin spoon (latte) and put the different coloured glitters into separate containers.

                                    

Easy Party Game!

What do children and magpies have in common?

They LOVE shiny things! Be it jewellery, sparkly lights, christmas decorations or glitter, one thing is for sure, anything that shines is a winner.

So what more could they want for a party game than glittery shiny shapes!?  Not only are these shiny shapes super cheap and available from craft shops, art stores and online, the little sequins are actually incredibly versatile and can keep the children entertained for hours!

Here are my top tips for incorporating these sequins into your child's Birthday party:



1) Remember my earlier post when I discussed the importance of having a theme? Well sequins can really add to that. Describe them to the children as fairy dust or princess sparkles, or if you are having a pirate party the shiny shapes can become the treasure or they can even be a superhero's secret power!

2) I like to use my shiny shapes at the beginning of the party.  Tell the children you have some magic on you and show them the shiny shapes (extra points if you make a special pouch to hold them in!) and sprinkle a few into each of their hands.  When all the children have the sequins in their hands, say a simple 'spell' all together and throw them up in the air at the same time.

3) When all the shapes are on the floor, start a dancing game where each time the music stops, the first child to bring you, for example, 3 blue shapes is the winner.

4) An excellent way to clear the shapes up before moving onto another party game is to simply run a contest where whoever has the most shapes and brings them to you first is the winner!

5) To make the Birthday tea more exciting for the children, give each of them a small handful of the shiny shapes to decorate the table before they begin eating.

6) If you decide to break halfway through a party for party food, I would suggest having a non-energetic party game afterwards.  By providing some glue, paper and colouring in pencils, encourage them to use the shiny shapes to stick onto their drawings.  Again, a theme really comes in useful here as  you can tell them to draw a princess, fairy, superhero etc and use the shiny shapes to decorate them.

Thanks for reading!

Emma x