Woodland Theme Birthday Party

All posts tagged Woodland Theme Birthday Party

Your Face Goes Here – Gnome Edition

Posted by James on April 22, 2014

Posted in: New Home, Projects. Tagged: Face in the Hole, Gnome Cutout, Woodland Theme Birthday Party. 4 Comments

OK,

Not really sure what exactly to call these painted murals with face holes.

I Googled……and, (clears throat)…..”Face in the Hole” came up a lot.

For some reason that……just……doesn’t…..sound……classy?

So, let’s go with, “Your Face Goes Here”.

I found this whimsical gnome image online…….

Just the “Woodland Party” inspiration we were looking for.

I started by priming a sheet of 1/2 thick plywood.

Jamie took the picture that I found, and projected it onto the primed plywood. (Finally making a good use of that FAME soundtrack CD)

See?

All’s I had to do is trace the image with a pencil.

Pretty simple,

I thought about just making it a big square…but convinced myself to cut the shape out with a jig-saw. After all, I had to cut the hole for the faces to go anyway.

We matched up the colors in the original with acrylic craft paint…and started the hours and hours and hours of painting. Didn’t know just how long it would take……and it took a while, a looong while.

Here’s my progress over a few nights,

I mounted 2X4’s as braces and hid them with Boston ferns so no one would trip.

Then took pictures of everyone ………putting their face in the hole.

I know….cute, cute, cute.

Woodland Theme Party Details

Posted by James on April 16, 2014

Posted in: New Home, Projects. Tagged: Design Master, Design Master Holiday Red spray paint, Gnome Party, Gnome Party Hats, Gnomes, Monogram Moss Wreath, Woodland Theme Birthday Party. 3 Comments

Here are a few of the details that we did to make Madeleine’s woodland themed first birthday extra special.

For the monogram wreath:

We started with a green foam wreath shape and an “M” cut from fiberboard. Both from the craft store.

With a glue gun I carefully glued sheet moss pieces to the wreath form. Got these at the craft store too.

After spraying the “M” with Design Master Holiday Red spray paint, we punched dots from self adhesive craft foam with a hole punch and just randomly covered it.

Trust me, Jamie was punching dots for days.

Poke in a couple of wired silk Monarch butterflies and you have a pretty cute wreath,

For the toadstools:

We started with a bag of foam ball halves, again from the craft store.

Then sprayed them, also, with Holiday Red Design Master spray paint. Design Master is made just for crafts like this…regular spray paint with eat right through the foam. Trust me.

With more hot glue we attached the toadstool tops to the sprayed white dowels.

…and again added foam dots punched from adhesive craft foam.

We made 2 sizes and simply stuck them in all the ferns to keep things looking a little “cartoon-y” and not too serious. It was a kids party after all.

For the gnome hats:

I disassembled a plain party hat from Party City and used it as a template to trace on a sheet of red felt.

After cutting out the felt hat shape, I gave them a good, heavy spritz of spray adhesive. The overspray is pretty messy, and you want to go as close to the edges as possible, so lay down a drop cloth to protect all the surfaces.