I have been really slacking on both making cakes and taking photos of said cakes. I just haven't had that drive to accomplish recently. However, I have done a couple and one of them is this Rawr Dinosaur cake for a friend's child. The dino is made out of rice krispie treats and fondant. I used the #3 tip to make the "scales" impression and brushed on green petal dust for a nice shimmer. It was fun to make and I loved making it!Now, the most exciting part is that my son's birthday is coming up! I love to plan birthday parties and being that my kiddo is turning 5, and wants an Angry Birds party, I'm really excited. There's so much to work with when planning an Angry Birds party, so much inspiration to draw from! I have of course used Pinterest to find many things and in the process of doing lots of AB crafts, I have found myself inspired. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: I did plan on covering his party in a few blog posts instead of all crammed into one so I can explain each thing, but then I put this blog on hold and didn't keep up, so here it all is.)
The first is the Pig Pinata. I had originally asked a friend to make the pinata, then realized that that is a pretty labor-intensive task to ask a friend to do and started off on my own. I used a large paper lantern they had on clearance at Target ($7.50, and it came with the bottle lamp kit). It's a 12" I think. Anyway, I used that for the basic shape and put 3 layers of newspaper paper mache on. The first layer was pretty tricky and the lantern warped a bit, but I figured it was really not that big of a deal. If I had it to do again I'd do the first layer in a few sessions and not hang it to dry. After putting on about 3 layers, I did a layer of white computer paper. The paper mache glue I used was just about half and half white flour and water, sort of the consistency of pancake batter. Tear the paper into 1" strips about 6" long, dip them in the glue, and squeegee the excess off with your fingers prior to applying to the lantern. I left the hole in the top open and poured the pinata filler in. I used toys instead of candy and the slingshot fodder (more on that later). I bent the two little metal circles up so they would serve as easy hanging handles. I hung it by bungee cords and stuck a crown made out of paper on it. King Pig, yo.
The cupcakes were fun to make, and not as technical as I'd feared. They are different flavors (as shown on the following picture) with fondant.
The smash cake (okay, yes, he's old enough for just a regular cupcake, but how boring is that!?) was the Black Bird, the bomb. That's Stinkie's favorite. He was impressed.
The goody bags were just plain paper bags. I cut out the faces and glued them on while watching Stinkie learn how to roller skate. Cuz that's how I roll. Inside the bags are slingshots that I bought off Oriental Trading company and some felt masks I made. The slingshots were not the greatest quality but they held together and served their purpose. I made these baked cotton balls for slingshot ammo and loaded the pinata with the balls.Here's the kids eating cake and wearing their masks.
Too fun! I used this pattern for the masks but then altered it, because I didn't really like how low it came on my kid's face.
Stinkie wanted all the different Angry Birds games represented. Well, maybe I wanted to do that. Okay. It was all me. He couldn't decide so I went with and Angry Birds Universe party. Blame my inner Martha. So anyway, here's the different tables.
Space Table, with Galaxy Playdoh (black Playdoh with tons of glitter mixed in) and Red Vines. I made these signs for each of the tables by printing stuff off the internet and coloring them in with crayons. Haha. There are paper lanterns painted as planets hanging above the Space table. You can see the food table in the background. The food was pulled pork (get it? Dead pigs. Har de har har.) and rolls with fruit skewers. The fruit skewers were a chunk of fresh pineapple, three blueberries, a strawberry, and a green grape (representing the yellow, blue, and red birds and a pig). They were a big hit but took a lot of time.
Some of the plushies were homemade using the link here, and some of them were bought from Costco as dog toys. Hey don't judge, the kid toys were $10-20 a piece, but the dog toys were $10 for 6! And yeah, I totally bought the table toppers from Party City. I had a lot of tables to fill! I like the AB tablecloth but it would have been fine to use regular tablecloths.
Anyway, I needed the plushies because I made bowling pins out of knockoff Sprite 2 liters and some coloring sheets that I taped on. The cans in the foreground I saved from making crockpot chili, spraypainted dark green, then painted noses on. So easy, and boom, there were two neat little games. The kids used their slingshots on the cans. I took a kickball and painted the face of a red bird on it for the bowling game. I put enough water in the "pins" to fill them about 1/5-1/4 full. You can buy the kickballs already made but I saved $7 doing it myself. Dang. I didn't get a picture and now it's sitting out in my back patio all covered in mud.
For the Angry Birds Seasons table, I did Easter, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween and Valentine's Day. Easter was the cookie pops I got from the dollar store and the egg streamer shown. I made it out of paint chips and talk about a pain in the rear. Christmas was sprigs of pine and a wreath (not pictured). Valentine's day was the hearts I cut out with a heart punch. St. Patrick's was little felt leprechaun hats I made out of scraps and hot glue. There's one hidden in the cookies. Halloween was some paper lanterns with Halloween stuff on them. The "Angry Art" was coloring pages took out of dollar store AB coloring books and a bunch of crayons.
The following pictures are here for two reasons. To show you the Angry Birds Rio table (drinks) and how massively it was raining while I set this whole thing up by myself. Whoa. I thought we were going to be rained out completely, but the rain stopped 5 minutes before the party started and tons of friends actually showed up!
The monkey and the birds were little blowups that I got in a grab bag from another mom here in the Richmond area for $5 from her kid's Rio party. I used that table as the hydration station.
Wow. See the puddle!? The entire ground was water. You can see the leis hanging there, and there are hair clips set in the centerpiece for the taking.
Not pictured are the glass marbles. I used a 1" punch to cut out printed birds and pigs, then glued one to the bottom of those clear rocks you can get at the dollar store. You just put a drop on the bottom of the clear glass marble and press it onto the picture, then paint clear nail polish over the paper after it dries. In hindsight, it was probably not the best idea to provide kids with slingshots and glass marbles. Nobody put the two together though until after the party! You can see them in the foreground of this picture, on the purple tablecloth. I used them as table scatter.
Also, the ruffled streamers are like the ones I made last year for his Mario party. You just get two colors and ruffle stitch them together. I'm so glad I did this because the humidity was through the roof and regular streamers would have collapsed. The stitching makes the streamers much more hardy.
That's all I can think of for now! And now I have to get to posting all the cakes I've done since his birthday! I have definitely slacked off and now I'm just doing cakes that strike my fancy.
TaaTaa, Friendlies!
