Birthday Idea- Painting Party! Part 1

My daughter choose a painting party for her third birthday. I got the idea from this Parents Magazine article.

It was a fairly cheap and fun party to prepare for. The color scheme was the primary colors- red, yellow and blue. I bought majority of the paper goods from the Dollar Tree. I bought red, blue and yellow plates, cups, utensils, table clothes and balloons.

I also found paper gift bags at the Dollar Tree in the colors I needed. I wrote each child's name on them and placed them on a table with a red tablecloth. I used the bags to put each child's artwork in as part of their goody bag.

 Decorating the "art studio" was fun! I had planned for it to be an outdoor party but unfortunately, it poured on S's party day. Nevertheless, the party went on. We ended up using my parent's garage so that we didn't make a mess in the house. 

I bought clothes line and clothes pins from the Dollar Tree. I hung the line up around the garage so that when kids started making pictures, we could hang them up to decorate the place as we went along. It was also great to have a place to hang the wet paintings so they dried before the kids went home. I wrote Live, Laugh and Create on 3 sheets of paper and hung them up on one line and it looked really cute. 

The kids started off coloring with markers and crayons. I bought crayon and paint pads at Target for $1.99 each. Next, the kids painted with a cool hopmemade paint recipe that I will share in the next blog. Then, they ended with playdough. I also made the playdough from scratch. I used this recipe from teachnet.com.

Kool-Aid® Play Dough

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 package unsweetened Kool-Aid
  
• 1/4 cup salt
  
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
  
• 1 cup water

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar and Kool-Aid® in a medium pot. Add water and oil. Stir over medium heat 3 to 5 minutes. When mixture forms a ball in pot, remove. Knead until smooth. Put in a plastic bag and refrigerate.

 

After the kids were done with the play dough, I separated them into sandwich baggies and gave each child a bag to take home. For more favors, I also included recipes on how to make homemade play dough and homemade paint.

The big hit was the cake I made myself. First time that I ever made a cake for a birthday party. It came out awesome and I'm really glad I did it. I'll write a larger post on how I amde the cake, the icing I used and how I made an art easel out of clothespins to hold the "Happy 3rd Birthday S" sign.