I have about a million posts to write on everything I did for Kalia's First Birthday Party. I kept the decor pretty inexpensive, more work on my part than actual cost.
I'm not really good on 'themes' with parties. For a baby shower I was helping throw, one of the girls asked what kind of theme we wanted to go with (I was in charge of decorations) and I said "baby". When they said, yeah, but what kind of baby theme, I replied with "baby girl." For my own wedding, when the florist asked what kind of flowers I wanted, I said "pretty ones". When it comes to parties / events, I'm not really big into themes, I just want everything to mean something and look cool. Does that count as a theme??
But for Kalia's invites I sent out, I used pictures, so I guess that was sort of my theme. I decided to mimic her nursery colors of both blue and pink as well, and went forward with a game plan from there. I am a little crazy about pictures...especially of Kalia. I have always loved capturing moments, so I decided to incorporate some of that into the party decor / events as well.
I've seen photo booths used at events before, so I wanted to recreate something like that, but a lot less pricey, and something relating back to Kalia. So here's what I did :
I picked up a large piece of clearance fabric, and had Chris hold it up where I wanted it to go to make sure the empty wall I was putting it on didn't dwarf the fabric.
Then I drew a large heart in chalk on the fabric.
I used Kalia's ottoman from her nursery to trace the circular parts of the heart, and then a ruler to draw the straight part.
After that, I took a pink and a blue paint pen and got to writing Kalia's name. Over.and over.and over again. I sort of felt like I was in elementary school and had gotten in trouble and had to write my name on the chalk board about a million times.
In all honesty, it took me probably about 15 minutes to write it out. It just seemed like a lot longer than that!
The fabric needed a large frame to go in, and there is no way I'm dishing out the cash for one of those, so I made one. I wanted the frame to have a little more detail than my normal picture frames, so I whipped out my router tool for the first time. That thing is amazing. So easy and so fun to use! Here's an in action shot :
and here's what the wood looked like afterwards.
I initially glazed the frame to bring out my routing detail, but the glaze just didn't go with Kalia's fabric heart, so I nixed that. After I nailed the large frame together, I gave her a few coats of white spray paint.
From there, I just stapled the fabric to the back of the frame. I can't decide if I want to reuse the frame for something else, so I didn't put too many staples in it. In hindsight, I should have either glued the fabric around it and cut it off, or just gotten over it and put enough staples to pull it tight. The fabric wrinkled a bit more than I would have liked. Overall though, I was still happy with the final product.
Besides this being the photo wall, we also did Kalia's smash cake using this as the back drop.
Kalia wasn't sure what to think of the 40 people singing Happy Birthday to her! I'll have more in action shots of the photo wall coming up shortly, so stay tuned for that.
Hope everyone's had a great week so far!
I'm not really good on 'themes' with parties. For a baby shower I was helping throw, one of the girls asked what kind of theme we wanted to go with (I was in charge of decorations) and I said "baby". When they said, yeah, but what kind of baby theme, I replied with "baby girl." For my own wedding, when the florist asked what kind of flowers I wanted, I said "pretty ones". When it comes to parties / events, I'm not really big into themes, I just want everything to mean something and look cool. Does that count as a theme??
But for Kalia's invites I sent out, I used pictures, so I guess that was sort of my theme. I decided to mimic her nursery colors of both blue and pink as well, and went forward with a game plan from there. I am a little crazy about pictures...especially of Kalia. I have always loved capturing moments, so I decided to incorporate some of that into the party decor / events as well.
I've seen photo booths used at events before, so I wanted to recreate something like that, but a lot less pricey, and something relating back to Kalia. So here's what I did :
I picked up a large piece of clearance fabric, and had Chris hold it up where I wanted it to go to make sure the empty wall I was putting it on didn't dwarf the fabric.
Then I drew a large heart in chalk on the fabric.
I used Kalia's ottoman from her nursery to trace the circular parts of the heart, and then a ruler to draw the straight part.
After that, I took a pink and a blue paint pen and got to writing Kalia's name. Over.and over.and over again. I sort of felt like I was in elementary school and had gotten in trouble and had to write my name on the chalk board about a million times.
In all honesty, it took me probably about 15 minutes to write it out. It just seemed like a lot longer than that!
The fabric needed a large frame to go in, and there is no way I'm dishing out the cash for one of those, so I made one. I wanted the frame to have a little more detail than my normal picture frames, so I whipped out my router tool for the first time. That thing is amazing. So easy and so fun to use! Here's an in action shot :
and here's what the wood looked like afterwards.
I initially glazed the frame to bring out my routing detail, but the glaze just didn't go with Kalia's fabric heart, so I nixed that. After I nailed the large frame together, I gave her a few coats of white spray paint.
From there, I just stapled the fabric to the back of the frame. I can't decide if I want to reuse the frame for something else, so I didn't put too many staples in it. In hindsight, I should have either glued the fabric around it and cut it off, or just gotten over it and put enough staples to pull it tight. The fabric wrinkled a bit more than I would have liked. Overall though, I was still happy with the final product.
Besides this being the photo wall, we also did Kalia's smash cake using this as the back drop.
Kalia wasn't sure what to think of the 40 people singing Happy Birthday to her! I'll have more in action shots of the photo wall coming up shortly, so stay tuned for that.
Hope everyone's had a great week so far!
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