My Party File - blog

Posts Tagged ‘beach’

Yesterday at Tuesday featured these adorable personalised beach buckets, complete with tutorial.  What a wonderful party favour or “goodie bag” for a beach party.  To make them you will need to use masking tape to mark off a rectangle on the bucket.  Apply chalkboard paint in the rectangle area  - you may need to do about 4 layers (letting each layer dry before applying another one) to get a consistent chalkboard colour.  Add a design and name onto the chalkboard area using Deco Color markers.  Then carefully remove the masking tape to reveal your masterpiece!

Here’s a fab idea for a craft/arrival activity for a beach or mermaid party. You will find a great tutorial on how to make these sea shell balls at Keen Inspirations.  For a mermaid party, you could use coloured sea shells, or embellish them with small coloured star fish, or add some glitter!

This looks just like a soft serve icecream, but it is actually a cupcake. Pretty cool, hey?  This fabulous cupcake was made by Jayne Harrison, and she claims they are easy to make.

How to make icecream cone cupcakes

Use a cake batter of your choice, and pour it into flat-bottomed cones - filling no more than halfway.  Then cook according to your cake recipe or packet instructions.   You may need to keep checking the cakes with a skewer to ensure the cake batter is cooked through until you’ve worked out the perfect cooking time (afterall, it will depend on the size of the cones you use).  When the cake is cooled, trim any excess (you can see she has scooped a little of the cake out before adding the icing), then pipe vanilla buttercream on top, and then push a Cadbury flake into the icing.  No more effort than normal cupcakes!

Alternative:  For some extra scrumptiousness, use a bismarck piping nozzle to pipe some jam or chocolate spread into the middle of the cake before icing it.

The kids will enjoy making an “ocean in a bottle” at your Under the Sea, Mermaid or Pirate party.

To make an “ocean in a bottle”, you will need:

• 350 ml (12 ounce) plastic bottles with screw on caps (1 per child)  - clean and label free
• 175 mls (6 ounces) of cooking oil per child
• 175 mls (6 ounces) of vinegar per child
• Blue Food colouring
• Tiny Shells, plastic seawood, glitter, plastic confetti, tiny plastic toys, sea themed beads
• A funnel
• Rubber cement or strong glue

Instructions
Use the funnel to pour the cooking oil into each child’s bottle, followed by the vinegar. The oil will go to the top and the vinegar to the bottom. Allow the kids to watch this, before pouring several drops of blue food colouring into the bottles. Again, let the kids watch the fluids interacting.

Close the caps tightly and let the kids shake the bottles to make waves. Let them then put some shells, glitter, confetti and toys into the bottle so that they can float in the “ocean”. Seal the caps shut with rubber cement or glue to prevent it leaking.

Although the ingredients are non-toxic, warn the kids that they shouldn’t drink the liquid in the bottle.

TIP:  I used small cosmetic bottles that you buy for travelling.

Linking to:

The Girl Creative

Its So Very Cheri

Delicious Ambiguity

Blue Cricket Design

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Perfect for a pirate or mermaid party, this treasure chest cake is simple and fun. 

I started by making the top of the treasure chest out of milk chocolate.  I used half of a round loaf tin as the mould.  I took a sheet of alfoil and folded creases in it to line the tin - this gave the wooden effect.  Then I simply melted approximately 100g of milk chocolate to use in the mould.

For the base you simply need to start with a rectangular cake - I cheated and bought an icecream cake made from chocolate icecream.  If you are using a standard cake, simply ice with chocolate butter icing to match your lid.

Put the top of the chest on your cake by balancing on some wooden skewers.  Then use Curly Wurly chocolate bars around the sides of the bottom to create a chest effect.  Add licoroce strap to your chest for even more character.  Then the fun part - fill the chest with all kinds of lollies (including chocolate coins) as your treasure.  I simply used jelly beans, Smarties and Kool Mints.  Toast some coconut in a fry pan and add as a sand effect around your chest.

Quite easy and most impressive!

Its amazing what a cellophane bag and curling ribbon can transform.  I bought chocolate coins and gummi fish to put into these ‘pirate treasure’ bags.  I tied them up with curling ribbon and added the starfish tags to keep with the theme.

Good, healthy food can be served at a kids party.  There are always ways to make it exciting for the kids - even just putting it in the right dish can make a difference.

I served vegetables, crackers and dip at Bella’s mermaid party in this gorgeous starfish platter I picked up from a variety store.  Yum!

Anything can become a part of your theme with a little creativity and a hot glue gun.  I purchased these starfish decorations sure I could add them in some way to my daughter’s mermaid party - and I did.  Using a hot glue gun I stuck them on to cheap hair ties.  Perfect for any little mermaid!

I made these plaster shells for the guests to paint at Bella’s mermaid party.  It was a great activity to start the kids off with as they waited for other guests to arrive.  We glued magnets on the back after so that they could take them home and put them on the fridge.

Plaster mix and moulds can be found at most craft stores - this was, in fact, a chocolate mould!  You could also make these as party favours for the guests to take home and paint.

You can buy paper goodie bags in lots of colours from most craft stores.  For my daughter’s mermaid party I chose this blue to complement the theme of pink and blue.

To make the bag a little more interesting I cut a starfish and made a window in the front of the bag.  There’s a few useful tips in doing this:

• Keep the bags flat (folded) for the cutting
• Find a piece of thick card that you can insert into the flattened bag to use as a cutting board
• Print a template of the starfish and using a glue stick, glue the template in place on the bag (be sure to only glue inside the starfish as this will be the piece you end up throwing away) - this saves drawing lines on your bag
• Using a stanley knife trace over the lines of your template to cut out the shape on the bag

It is actually very easy.  Once I’d done the cutting I glued in a square of overhead transparency with glue stick to create the window.  I also added the curled ribbon and starfish thank you tags to finish them off.