Happy Birthday K!

With three daughters it seems we have a birthday party to attend every other weekend. Which means lots of skate parties with cake and ice cream for my littles. And a lot of creative thinking for me.

The most recent birthday party was for the girls across the street. The two of them and the three of my girls have quickly become bff's, besties, whatever the "cool" lingo is right now. The oldest girl turned 8 and has a pink, black and white room with zebra print accents so I used that as my inspiration. I got everything I needed at Michael's (Surprised? Didn't think so.)

What I used:

paper mache Letter K: a few bucks

Zebra scrapbook paper: 12x12 two sheets, one for each, $0.59 a piece

Mod Podge (already had)

Black craft paint (already had)

Pink Ribbon: $1.50

Buttons (already had)

Hot glue gun & glue (already had)

Total: under $3

Making this frame and "K" went pretty quickly. Directions for both are basically the same. I put the scrapbook paper wrong side up and traced the K and frame and cut the shapes out. I used black craft paint on the edges, this is optional but I wanted everything to look finished and professional.

Once the paint was dry I used Mod Podge to apply the scrapbook paper. I always smooth out my air bubbles with a Pampered Chef pan scraper thingy. They work wonderfully. After a few minutes the Mod Podge is dry I use a sanding sponge to get smooth out where my paper hangs over. Then cover with another coat of Mod Podge.

While I'm waiting for that to dry I made my ribbon flowers. I don't have a photo tutorial for the ribbon flowers but will have to put one together soon. I'll try and explain the best I can. I cut my ribbon about six inches long, laying it flat on my table I brought the ends together in the middle, you want the ends to overlap just a little. Next I gathered the ribbon in the center making it look like a bow tie and stitched it together.

Before I applied the flower I wrapped a piece of ribbon around the frame and K where I wanted the flowers to be. I just used a little double sided tape to hold the ribbon in place and hot glued the back to secure. I attached my "bow ties" one at a time with hot glue to make the flowers and with a little more hot glue I added the black buttons. On the frame I used my Cricut to cut out friends forever and applied it with Mod Podge.

There ya go! A personalized, relatively inexpensive birthday gift. The birthday girl and her mom went bananas when they saw these. I'd say they turned out pretty well.

Blessings.