Arty Party

Inspired by a craft party her elder sister had been to, our youngest liked the idea of having an arty party for her 6th birthday.

We’d planned to have a small party at home, which was perfect for lots of hands on activities as the children would be able to have plenty of help with their masterpieces.

Of course the invitations were the first thing to think about, we’re big fans of recycling our old crayons, so thought these would be cute on little cards as a nod towards the theme of our party. If you haven’t made your own crayons before, it’s really simple. You just need to collect up any old and broken crayons, remove any paper wrappers and break them into small pieces. Then you pop them into a silicone mold, we used hearts, but lego men are fun or any shape you have. Then you need to put them in a hot oven until all the pieces melt, around 10 minutes. We’ve found it helps to group similar colours together then if you overdo the melting they don’t just turn into a sludgy brown.

So onto the big day! We spend the morning decorating the house, we went for a pastel rainbow colour theme, to match the arty theme but still look pretty. We hung pom poms and streamers and our favourite clear balloons filled with confetti.

The party table was set up ready for all the art activities, we put everyone’s blank materials onto named paper plates and filled the rest of the table with jars and pots of decorations, pens, ribbons etc, it all looked very inspiring.

We had a few main activities for the guests to do and a few other simple extra crafts for anyone who finished quickly. We started by decorating ceramic cupcake money boxes, they looked great and everyone had completely different ideas about how they wanted theirs to look.

Next we moved on to designing pencil cases, these were just plain calico cases and we used fabric markers to draw designs.

Then we made socktopusses! These are really fun to make and very simple. You just need a fun coloured sock which you fill with a ball of stuffing, then you tie round to make a ball at the top, leaving quite a lot of fabric for the legs, you then cut the remaining fabric into 8 to make the tentacles. We then added goggly eyes and faces.

Those that finished quickly also made paper plate crowns, with silver plates and gem stickers.

Next it was time for a quick mini-disco in the living room while we cleared the art table for the party tea! We carried on our rainbow theme with pretty stripes plates and cups and lots of bright coloured foods, the rainbow fruit kebabs were a big hit.

Finally we ended the party with a slice of birthday cake. We kept this fairly simple by covering one layer with sprinkles and the second was plain icing with rainbow colours dripping down the sides to look like paint dripping.

Party bags were easy, we filled plain white bags with all the crafts the guests had made and just added a few sweets, stickers and mini paint pallets.

This was a really easy party to do at home and the children were really engrossed in all the activities and very proud of what they produced.

You can buy the party supplies that we used from The Party Pirate website

• What People Ate

  Fruit kebabs, rainbow jelly, mini pizzas, sandwiches, party biscuits.

• What People Drank

  Juice

• Desserts

  Jelly and Birthday cake

• Party Favors

  Craft supplies, Mini Paint Sets, Rainbow Pencils, Stickers, Candy Necklaces, Cupcake notebooks.

• Activities / Games

  Disco, Pass the Parcel, Lucky Dip. Making cupcake money boxes, pencil cases, socktopusses, paper plate crowns.

• Lois & Sophie

  Other