In my first post about birthday crafting, it was all about my best friend and her beautiful twins. This one is about another special little boy in my life. My, now four year old, nephew. This little one has been extremely special since before he was born. He's the first baby for my sister-in-law and her husband. He's the first grandchild. He's our first nephew. So of course his birthdays are going to be special.
As I also mentioned before, I have become quite the crafter. My sister-in-law is quite the planner. She tells me what she wants, and we work together to execute. My nephew has had a theme birthday party each year, and this year was obviously no different. His first birthday was monster themed, and I can remember being up until two in the morning making decorations and decorating cupcakes for a party that this kid wasn't even going to remember. His second birthday was Mickey Mouse themed thanks to a little show called Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Thank goodness that Cricut exists and we learned how to use it. It made things so much easier, but again, we were up until all hours of the morning making everything, but he was so excited because everything was Mickey and it was just for him. His third birthday was Toy Story themed. He had just seen Toy Story 3, and was in love with Jessie after our trip to Disney World that winter. And again it was another late night before the party getting everything all finished up.
This year was no different. The phase of the year was Moana, and more specifically for Cameron, Maui. He loves Maui and wanted a Maui Birthday Party, and we were only too happy to oblige. We began looking up different ideas much earlier this year. Because I have the Cricut Explore Air, if we had vector images of the characters, we would be able to cut them out accurately and create some pretty incredible decorations. The banner above was created using stock images and fonts that were available on the Cricut Design Studio. The Moana accents were added by cutting out vector images that my sister-in-law purchased off of Etsy. This banner was a main focal point at the party, and it was hung in the dining room area of their house.
The week of his party, my sister-in-law came over to our house in order to use our Cricut and cut out everything so that we could get things together before the night before the party. She had a massive list of things to accomplish, and we checked off most of them.
She wanted to make...
- Maui's fish hook for each of 48 Shiny Cupcakes
- Signs for the cupcakes and heart of Tefiti cookies
- A large cutout of Hei Hei
- A large cutout of Pua
- A large cutout of Tamatoa
- The happy birthday banner and accents
- Palm leaves to create palm trees
- A large cutout of Maui - this one ended up being wishful thinking. We couldn't get it to work for some reason. It was very frustrating.
- A You're Welcome Poster
- Cocamora boxes for trail mix
- Cocamora coconut cups
- Popsicle stick canoes for the tables
We'll start with the popsicle stick canoes. She bought a box of crafting popsicle sticks and had her mom assemble the little boats. The sail is a triangle cut out on the Cricut with red glitter glue in the form of the Heart of Tefiti.
The cutouts for each of the characters were simple and complicated all at the same time. We ended up having to use several different features of the Cricut in order to make these possible. It's fantastic that you are able to draw, cut, weld, attach, and view the layers separately and together all on the same screen. Hei Hei was extremely intricate and we ended up using the writing feature to display the finer details. Tamatoa was just a lot of layers that all needed to be cut out separately. The gold glitter paper was several layers that I welded together in order to cut it out as larger pieces to make them easier to glue together at the end. Pua was extremely simple and made with larger pieces that were easy to put in the right spot.
The Heart of Tefiti and Shiny Cupcake signs were made using stock images and fonts from the Cricut Design Studio that I just made the right size. The cupcakes were made from box cake mix in chocolate and vanilla, cream cheese frosting from a can, and gold shiny sprinkles. We cut out Maui's fish hook at about 2 inches to glue them to toothpicks for the fish hook that is supposed to be on Tamatoa's back. The Heart of Tefiti cookies are made from sugar cookie dough that was dyed two different shades of green. We flattened the dough and rolled the two different ones together. I then used thread to cut the cookies without having to slice through it with a knife and ruining the round shape. I'm glad I retained that one trick from cooking class in high school! We then rolled the edges in green glitter, and they came out awesome.
For the palm trees that we put together in the basement, I found a vector image of several different palm leaves, and picked one that would be easy and quick to cut out. We had about 16 leaves which were used for 5 palm trees. The trunks of the trees were made from brown streamers that were hung to go all the way to the floor. We used three to give it some thickness. The coconuts are made from brown balloons. They were blown up a little too largely for the task at hand, but it ended up working out. Then we used the leaves to make the palms of the palm tree. Turned out super cute!
The last thing we did on Friday night before the party was make these Cocamora Coconut cups. They were purchased on Amazon and we had a dozen of them. We painted the round part of the face on first in a tan color. There were several different designs in the Pinterest post.The image that we started with is below. Some of the designs are easier than others when you're using various paint brushes, and I wish I had a picture of our whole group of them because they were so cute. The kids loved them and got to take them home!
I can't say whether or not I will put all of this effort into my kids birthday parties. I guess it depends on the time of year when they take place. I want them to have adorable birthday parties, but I don't know if it's worth taxing myself beyond belief because this kid isn't even mine, and I feel like I am just as exhausted as his parents when the party is over. I guess what helps me is that my Cricut will be at my house already and I will probably know my plan well before two weeks before the party.
Planning and doing things like this make me extremely excited for when it is my kids and I can make their day as special as they are.
Until next time...
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