Beary Special -4yr- Homemade Creations!

I was thrilled that my little girl wanted a Care Bear party for her 4th birthday. I spent several months planning the party and got a lot of great ideas from this site.

For the invitation I downloaded the care bear font and pictures from the care bear website. I took plain white cardstock and used a technique with spraypaint and a paper towel. You tear the paper towel several times and place one piece at a time on the cardstock. (I did this outside because it can be messy)Simply spray with blue spray paint. Keep moving the papertowel -  different pieces for different shapes - and you get what looks like clouds on the paper. So I then printed a care bear on the cardstock and the invitation read - Join our Party We'd sure like you to come to celebrate Heather's 4th Birthday and join in all the Care Bear Fun. Then below was the date and time info.  I bought rainbow colored ribbon and put a simple bow at the top. They looked like a care bear was standing in the clouds. For the envelopes I also used the care bear font and for the return address I put a picture of a care bear with my daugthers name and address.  

For decorations I bought plain white shower curtain liners from the dollar store and made transparancies from coloring sheets (found online). I borrowed the overhead projector from the library and projected the coloring sheet image onto the liner then outlined it with a black marker. Then I took regular acrylic paint and colored in the care bears the appropriate color. I had 15 different images - some were individual care bears and others were whole scenes. It took 4 shower curtain liners in all. I hung these on the doors and outside on the fence. We had a bunch of balloons of course - and I found large care bear shaped baloons as well. We had a rainbow pull string pinata.

Our present to my little girl was the care bear castle that is no longer made - I found it on ebay along with the ferris wheel and care bear car. I had this sitting on a table with a lot of little care bear figures for decorations. Before the party was over - this was on the floor for the younger kids to play with. I made a happy birthday banner with large care bear figure printed on photo paper and for each letter of Happy Birthday I printed it on one sheet of paper using care bear font. Then I used the rainbow ribbon and ran it though the top of each sheet of paper with a care bear picutre at each end. It looked cute. I used the treat bags as decorations - I put them on the mantle.

I bought plain white handled gift bags - a multi pack at walmart. I used the same technique as with the invitations using spraypaint and paper towels all along one side of the bag. I bought a pack of care bear valentines on clearance after Valentines day and cut out each individual care bear. Then I cut out for each bag either a sun or moon and balloons, rainbows, or presents and decorated each bag different. I used the valentines to make it look like they were holding baloons or presents, some of them had on party hats. At the bottom of each bag I taped polyfill (like to stuff a pillow). It looked like the care bears were standing on a cloud. They sortof looked like scrapbook pages. Each bag had the childs name tied to it on a piece of cardstock in care bear font with a piece of rainbow ribbon.

Treats included care bear pencils, a care bear figure, bubbles, water guns, playdough, heart necklaces and bracelets, a care bear sticker sheet, a homemade coloring book, and crayons. For the coloring book I used coloring pages from the internet and just trimmmed them some. The front was a scene of care bears printed in color and said Thanks for coming to Heather's 4th Birthday Party - You made it Beary Special. The back cover was a picture of all the care bears that said We Love you.  I made all the party hats with different color card stock - I found a pattern online and you basically just roll the cardstock and staple it -I put a little tape for extra support. On the front of the hat I put a large care bear picture that I made with sticker paper from the same care bear website. Each hat had a different care bear. I glued pompom balls to the bottom rim and one at the top. I stapled stretchy fabric covered colored elastic to the bottom to make a chin strap. I thought these turned out really cute.  The front of the box of valentine cards had a large care bear holding hearts - I cut this bear out and hot glued it to a lollipop stick and then taped it to the back of a bowl of chips.

For food we had pizza, chips, fruit kabobs in rainbow colors and care bear cupcakes and cakes. We also had cookies shaped like stars and hearts.  I used Wilton's care bear cake/cupcakes in the 2006 idea book for my guide. The cupcakes are iced blue and then you pipe a rainbow across the top and put an edible care bear face candy decoration in the middle and pipe white clouds on the bottom. They make care bear cupcake liners too. For the cake I made two 8inch round one vanilla and one chocolate. They were iced blue like the sky and I piped white clouds around it. I cut out stars, hearts, and the sun from fondant and placed them aound the cake. It should have had a fondant rainbow connecting the two cakes but mine did not turn out so instead I placed two care bear figures on one of the cakes and piped white clouds aound them. I used cookie cutters and cut out Happy Birthday Heather from fondant with letters alternating colors. We had rainbow colored sherbert. 

For activities when the children arrived they could get their face painted with either a sun, heart, or blue moon. Then they made a rainbow necklace with fruitloops - I had the fruitloops already divided up into 4 of each color in bags with their string. Those who did not want to play this just took their bag home. We had a moon bounce for the kids to jump in which was  a big hit. I had posters with different care bears and  the adults could try to guess the bears names. The other game was pin the sunshine on funshine bear. When I drew and painted the bears I left one's belly empty and painted him yellow. I found cute foam sunshines at Micheals and just put the childs name on the back and a piece of tape and let each one try to pin the sun on funshine while blindfolded.  I tried to get a group photo to include with the thank you notes. On one side of the thank you's I let my little girl write thank you and her name.

Everyone had fun and thought I spent a lot of time and money on the party. While the time part was true it really was not a lot of money involved. The memories were worth every minute or dollar spent.