real parties: an amazing art pARTy

This vibrant and colorful art party came to me from Katie Guess, created for her daughter Olivia's 2nd birthday at the Marbles Museum.  Highlights include custom crayons and invitations created as coloring pages, handmade pocket aprons and the infamous rainbow cake. There is so much true originality in these party details!  Read on for more creative ideas from Katie...

{images via katie guess}

Invitations: I traced a picture of my birthday girl in Illustrator, added some cake and balloons and printed out black and white images on paper (coloring page). The crayons had custom wrappers with the time, date, and place of the party printed on them. They looked like real Crayola Crayons! I folded the coloring page and placed the crayons inside, and that was the invitation. I also wrote on the coloring page to "bring your colored invitation to the party to hang up in the gallery". 

Party Favors: My mom and I custom sewed 15 waist aprons with little pockets for individual crayons. We did not follow a pattern, but there are tons of patterns and already made crayon aprons on Etsy. We just picked out fabrics that were colorful and gender specific. The girl's aprons had gathered tops and the boy's aprons were straight. We hung the aprons on a clothes line with colorful clothes pins and I decorated them with a "Thanks for Coming" label.

Table Top: I found these really cool place-mats on Fred and Friends website that looked like an art frame. I figured what better way to entertain two year olds than coloring. I placed crayons in little paint buckets on each table along with stickers. There were also custom labeled mason jars with colored pencils, candy dots, jellybeans, and twizzlers and some multi-colored daisies. The kids loved this!

Food: I got the multi-colored plastic plates and bowl from Ikea. Then each kid could take home a plate and bowl and you don't have paper plate waste. I went with the color theme and placed fruits and veggies in each bowl according to color (blueberries in the blue bowl, grapes in the purple bowl, kiwi in the green bowl, yellow peppers in the yellow bowl, cherry tomatoes in the red bowl and carrots in the orange bowl). I also just got some nuggets from Chic-Fil-A in hopes that the kids could get messy and use the dips as "paint" on their place-mats. The Gatorades came in multi colors, so I simply made labels to match the table decor. The waters were also custom labeled. I lined the Gatorade up according to color in rows to give it a rainbow look. I displayed cubed orange and white cheese on an artist palette. I labeled all of the foods with paint swatches from Home Depot. This is a good and FREE way to label anything, and it went with the theme! Utensils were displayed in empty paint cans. There was also a bowl of multi-colored Goldfish crackers for the kiddos.

Cake: The 6 layered cake was home made using just a regular cake mix and some neon gel food coloring. You bake each color/layer separately and then ice with white icing. The surprise is when you cut into it an see all of the layers that look like a rainbow. I found some crayon candles at our regular grocery store, and placed them on the cake in a "2" shape.