Sofia recently turned 6 (when did she get so big?!) and we decided to do a Circus / Carnival theme for her party. I made quite a few things for the party; decorations, some of the prizes, the tickets used for games, the ring toss game and the ring of fire game, I even put red and white cheap plastic tablecloths on the walls to make it seem like the inside of a circus tent! I also made a few things that I did not end up using, unfortunately, such as sign arrows (games, prizes, concessions, restrooms, I even made a "parking" one to point towards the living room couch), and I completely forgot about the cupcake toppers I had made (these are pictured, but this was after the party on some leftover cupcakes). It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to make unique things for my little girl's special day.
I made the goody bags (close up further down) and found this bean bag toss game for $20 at Hobby Lobby (unfortunately not on sale, but $20 isn't too bad, the kids really enjoyed it) The animals on top of the shelves got dressed up in party hats! Each game had a large ticket with it's own color and picture printed on it and smaller coordinating tickets were in each of the bags for the children to trade for a prize after playing each game (I cut each ticket out by hand, this was time consuming, but was a nice touch)
The magnetic dart board was a hit too! It was under $20 on Amazon.com and was a great purchase, we are still using it. The small coffee table had masks I printed and cut out from here
http://www.firstpalette.com/Craft_themes/Animals/animalmasks/animalmask.html along with a dish of crayons, we had black elastic string so the kids could wear them, but none of them sat still long enough for it to be put on after they finished coloring them.
Here is my daughter being a very ferocious lion, I got this on clearance at Michael's for only $4! I almost bought this at full price a few weeks before, and I'm so glad I didn't!
This is the balloon arch I made, I did not have a helium tank so it was rather time consuming, but I think it was worth it. You can see the ring of fire in the background, during the party it was hanging from the ceiling with a basket of tiger(and jaguar) stuffed animals, the kids threw them through the ring of fire for a prize! It is just a $3 hula hoop with gift tissue paper glued around it. I glued the tissue to itself, not the hoop, so after I just pulled it all off and my daughter now has a new hula hoop after breaking her last one!
This is a picture after the party, with leftover things I had sitting around. I realized I had not gotten a picture of the table before hand, and set this up in case I wanted some pictures to sell the items in my Etsy shop.
here is another shot from the table setup after the party, these are the cupcake toppers I had forgotten about during the party!
Close-up of the goody bags, I made tiny little paper flags, and then used a needle to get the string through and hung a little circus tent from the strings. I also made the bookmarks that were used as prizes/favors.
Here is a picture of the HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner during the party. My daughter has quite a few Schleich animals so I put them to work, dressing them up in tiny party hats and blankets I made for them. The seal even has a little paper "ball" stuck on his nose with a bit of removable wall putty.
I definitely didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, but things are always more hectic than you think they will be when you have a bunch of little kids running around the house during a party (The entire party was inside, our backyard is so horrible during this drought in Texas, huge cracks in the clay soil, and so many ants!)
