Art Studio -9yr-  Park Party

INVITATIONS:  I didn’t have a whole lot of time to make anything home-made, so we bought some colorful store bought invitations.  I wrote the party information in different colored thin-tip markers.  My daughter wrote, Come join the fun at XXXX’s Art Studio on the inside, and she made it look colorful.  

DECORATIONS:  We held this party at a nearby park, and so I had to turn a pavilion into an art studio!  I had some corrugated sheets laying around, so I taped a TON of my daughter’s artwork to them.  I tried to group them into themes.  She had some artwork from her second grade year, that was wonderful.  So, those I taped very carefully onto a sheet of corrugated.  Then using colored cardstock, I made a label that said, XXXX’s art  2013-2014.  I went through her school papers and art that I had saved from years past, and dug out a bunch more projects.  I had another ‘group’ of art that was titled Places and Things by XXXX.  She had drawn up all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles on separate sheets of paper, so I carefully taped those to a sheet of corrugated, and titled that collection Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, By XXXX. 

Another grouping was People by XXXX.  These were a lot of princess drawings, a self portrait, some fashion models she had drawn with different outfits.  Another collection was Animals by XXXX.  This collection had a bear(our school’s mascot), a cardinal, an elephant, and some others, that were done really nicely.  She had some abstract kind of artwork, that was almost like mosaics, or some sort of patterns, so I put those couple pieces together and labeled them Abstracts By XXXX.  And then she had some artwork from when she was preschool-kindergarten age, so I grouped those together and titled them, The Early Years By XXXX.  I had taken an easel, a kid’s easel, and old screen door, some binder clips, and some plastic clamps, down to the park, so that I could hopefully get all of these corrugated ‘collages’ set up all around the pavilion.  The food table leaned up against a wall, so I was able to set one on the end of that, and lean it up against the wall. 

I set up the kids easel, and on one side of it, was a home-made sign that said, XXXX’s Art Studio that my daughter made up.  She used different colored lettering.  This welcomed people to the party.  On the OTHER side of the easel, we clipped one of the collages.  I had an old screen door that I set up sideways on the grown up easel.  Then using clamps, I was able to set up about 3 or 4 of the collages on that.  My redneck was really coming out about now.  But, hey, what can I say, I’m resourceful.  The rest of the collages were leaning up against the walls, and clipped here and there.  We also made up paint cans which we used as table centerpieces.  We saved up 20 cans over a couple of weeks, and each can was wrapped in different colored paper, and then designated with that color.  We had 2 cans that were wrapped in pink construction paper, then labeled PINK.  Then 2 cans each of the following colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black and white.  All, wrapped in the corresponding color of construction paper, and labeled.  These were also used for a game. 

My daughter got out all of her markers, colored pencils, twistable colored pencils, and crayons, and pencils, and she divided these all up between the 20 cans.  The cans were then placed as center pieces down the tables.  The tables were covered in different colored table cloths.  I divided the party up into two sections, kids and adults.  I had 3 tables in a row, that were for the adults.  These tables had some 4 x 6 cardstock paper spread out in between the ‘colored cans’.  (I will get more into this later).  I also took down some of my black picture frames around my house, and framed some more artwork, and placed some of these frames on different tables as well.  My daughter got one of her pieces in an artbook, and that came ON her birthday!  So, I took this artbook for people to look at too!  The tablewares, was just different colored plates, napkins, cups, silverware. 

FOOD:  I had a sign that said, For the starving Artist that had black swirly type font, and a swirl type of border around it.  I framed this in a black frame, and set this up on the food table.  People thought that was kind of funny!  I made food tags for the food and table.  The food tags were shaped like crayons, and were folded in half to stand up.  Each food tag was a different color, and the food tag was drawn up to look like a crayon, then where the ‘color’ goes in the oval of the crayon, was the name of the food, which also doubled as the name of the crayon.   I had strawberries(Wild Strawberry Red was the food tag), Green Grapes(Groovy Grape Green), Cool whip(dyed blue) to dip the fruit in(Blue Swirl), Carrots(Cool Carrot Orange), Pretzels(Twisted Brown), Spinach dip(Dippin’ White), Hawaiian bread(no label), Rolos candy(Rolos of Gold), and Cheese cubes(Monty Jack Yellow).  We also had red Hawaiian punch and blue Hawaiian punch for drinks.  

ACTIVITY:  This was the one thing that my daughter REALLY wanted to do.  We bought enough canvas bags so that each child could decorate one.  We bought green, pink, and blue.  I put cardboard(cereal boxes) in each bag, so that the glue and markers wouldn’t go through to the other side.  I had these all set up down the ‘kid’ tables, so that the kids could start in on these right away.  The kids table had markers, foam stickers, and tacky glue.  I told the kids to make sure that they glued the foam stickers down, so that way they would stay really good.  I wanted some stickers that boys and girls could use and was able to find a big variety of foam stickers, so I was pretty happy with that.  I was able to get some stars, and fish and dolphins, and then there were flowers, and peace signs, and some letters, animals, and outer space ones.  This activity turned out pretty well.  The kids were able to do this for the most part themselves.  While the kids were decorating their bags, I announced that the adults were all entered into a contest!  I told them that they each had to write their name on one of the pieces of cardstock at their table, and they had to draw something on one side.  I told them it was up to them, if they wanted to draw something as simple as a stick person, or create a masterpiece, but that the birthday girl would be judging them for prizes later!  All the adults, surprisingly participated!  Even grandpa!  Ha!! 

GAMES:  The first game was kind of like a bean bag game.  I had drawn up a color pallete, like what artists use.  I had 5 color blobs(to look like the paint) on this, that were pink, red, orange, yellow, and blue.  Each ‘blob’ had a hole in it, that the kids would shoot a ball through.  I found this pig toy that shoots these balls, so I just thought the kids would have fun with that.  Each kid got 5 turns to shoot or hit the colors, each color corresponded to a starburst candy.  So, if the kids hit 2 oranges, 1 pink, 1 blue, and 1 red, that’s the starburst candies that they got to put in their goody bag.  This went over pretty well, the kids had a lot of fun with it, and really wanted to do it again, and again! 

The other game that we did was a sorting crayon relay.  For this game, I dumped out all of the art supplies from those 20 cans.  I set up 10 cans on each end of a picnic table.  I divided the kids into 2 teams.  At the back of the line of kids, I had a HUGE tub of crayons(allllllll of the mixed up, broken, leftover, crayons that we and others have accumulated forever).  The kid in the back of the line would grab one crayon and pass it up to the front, and the person at the front had to put that crayon in the correct can.  As soon as the person in the back had gotten a crayon and passed it, they went right back and got another crayon, so that everyone was constantly moving.  I set my time for 1 minute, and then the front person moved to the back, and we went again.  We did this until we made it through the kids once.  We might have gone through twice I can’t remember, I know that the kids were having a LOT of fun doing this.  It was so much fun, my mom and sister decided that THEY wanted to play too, and each one of them chose a team to play too.  Then of course we were hackling them the whole time to hurry up, only grab one crayon, etc.  It was hilarious!  I was going to count up the crayons each team sorted, and declare a winner, but I really don’t think the kids even cared. 

After this game was over, I collected all of the adults contest entries.  I told my daughter to pick the one that she thought was the BEST. Then to pick one that was 2nd place.then to pick the two that she thought were the worst, or most simplistic.  We announced the WINNER, and that person was declared a successful artist, they won a picture frame to frame their masterpiece!  The person that won 2nd was declared an artist in training, and they won some nice pens and pencils, to help them achieve their dream.  The LOSERS were declared STARVING ARTISTS, and were awarded some M&M’s and small bag of chips.  :)   Each child got their own ‘goody’ bag, that was just a brown paper sack, that had a ‘crayon-shaped’ tag on the front with each child’s name on it.  They had those glow in the dark bracelets, and a small notebook, and 4 crayons( we opted to just buy 2 boxes of crayons and divide them out, instead of buying a box of crayons for each child).  And their candy from the game from earlier. 

CAKE:  I made 2 round cakes, and stacked them up.  Then I frosted them white.  I drew an artists palette on the top, and then put different ‘blobs’ of paint on it.  I made the border around the bottom, by just dotting white, then red, then white, then orange, then white, then yellow, and so on.  Using up the leftover ‘paint’ colors. That turned out pretty.  The cupcakes were just frosted in different colors.  Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple.  We served the cake with vanilla, and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. The party was a huge success, and my daughter had a wonderful time!!