Skylanders Adventure -8yr- Cake Portal & Cupcakes

My daughter got the Skylanders game for her Wii last year.  She absolutely loves playing this, loves the characters, loves everything about this game.  So for her 8th birthday a Skylanders Birthday Party was born. 

INVITATIONS:  My husband designed a postcard style invitation.  It had our daughter’s favorite Skylander, Stump Smash coming out at you.  He found a font that is very similar to the Skylanders ‘font’ and created a banner across the top that said SKYLANDERS and then below that, where it usually says Spyro’s Adventure it said Daughter’s Adventure Birthday  The background of the postcard had black and white images of some of the other Skylanders, it looked almost comic book-like.  Then Party information was included at the bottom.  Date: /Game Time:/Game Room:/RSVP. 

DECORATIONS:  We held the party at a park near our house.  It gave us a little more room for the kids to run around, and it gave us a covered pavilion in case of bad weather.  Most of the decorations were signs, or part of some of the games.   My husband designed signs to be printed on 8 x 12 cardstock, to which I glued to some cardboard to make them more sturdy.  Most were mounted onto some dowel rods so that I could stick these into the ground.  There was a sign that we put near the park entrance that said Daughter’s Skylanders birthday party  it was in a Skylander type font.  I made a sign by hand that was about 2 feet by 4 feet that I hung on the pavilion.  It turned out really neat!  It just said Skylanders in an arch across the top.  I drew this free hand by looking at the font on the cover of the game and some books she has.  Underneath that it said Daughter’s Adventure.  I colored the letters in crayon, fading them like they look on the cover.  So the Skylanders lettering were in blue, and I faded them from darker to lighter. 

Then the Daughter’s Adventure was orange going up into yellow, I believe.  I took time to explain this, because it looked SO good!!  My daughter has a Skylanders Poster that came with her game, so I hung that up on the side of the pavilion.  This showed each set of Skylanders and their element.  If you’re not familiar with this at all there are 8 elements including life, tech, magic, water, air, and more. Skylanders belong to each element.  So, there are about 4-5 different Skylanders that are from the Magic element, and 4-5 from Tech, and so on.  The poster shows each element, and also the Skylanders that belong to each.  This poster was very helpful in a game later on. Each Skylander comes with its own card, like a baseball card.  I was going to make color photo copies of these, and scatter them along each table, I just ran out of time.  When my daughter was sick a couple of months ago, I bought her a Skylanders sticker book to help make her feel better, and this sticker book came in very handy for this party.  I’ll explain this more later.  Other than the few signs I mentioned, the tables were covered in purple table cloths, we used gold paper plates and napkins and cups.

FOOD:  We had an assortment of snack foods.  We named some of the foods after some of the Skylanders characters. The menu included Eruptor’s Hot Chicken Dip (buffalo chicken dip w/tortilla chips), Prism Break’s Broken Prisms (finger jello cubes/shapes), Sprocket’s Nuts n Bolts (cheerios and pretzel sticks).  We also had Lightning Rod’s Flashes of Lightning (cheese and crackers).  I found a place online that sells miniature cookie cutters, and I actually found a lightning rod cookie cutter.  I was going to cut cheese into the shape of lightning rods.  Well, the cheese wasn’t coming out intact, so I ended up cutting slices of cheese, and then cutting the lightning rod shape out of the MIDDLE of each slice. This turned out really cute and the cookie cutter was only a couple bucks!  Let’s see, we also had Stump Smash’s Chocolate Stumps (Rolos candy) and Gill Grunt’s Pond Juice (blue Hawaiian punch).  For each sign that went with the food, we found stickers of these characters in the sticker book that I mentioned before. Each sticker went onto a scrap piece of scrapbooking paper or cardstock, and then was folded over to stand.  My daughter is very crafty and loves to be involved, so she had fun picking out paper to match each character.  Red paper for Eruptor(who’s a Fire element),  Tan scrapbooking paper with egyption type graphics, that she used for Sprocket, who’s a Tech,  blue paper with swirly’s on it, for Lightning Rod who’s from the Wind/Air element.  She used leafy green paper for Stump Smash who’s from the Life element and blue wavy paper for Gill Grunt, who’s from the Water element.  Anyways, the food signs looked really cool. 

GAMES: My daughter drew up some Skylanders on some cardboard that we ended up turning into necklaces for each kid.  We laid these out on a table, and as the kids arrived, they could choose a necklace to wear.  I strung half of them with green ribbon, and half with red.  The first game that we played was Match the Skylander to its element.  My husband designed a sign that had each element on it, that said, Match the Skylander to its Element in a neat blue font.  I mounted this on cardboard, taped it to a dowel rod and put this in the ground near the game area.  My daughter drew up 2 Skylanders for each of the 8 elements. We could have had my husband print ‘real’ pictures off for these, or I could have photocopied the cards that came along with her Skylanders, but like I said, she likes to be involved.  She had fun drawing these up, and she did a wonderful job.  I separated these into 2 groups, so that each stack had 8 Skylanders, one from each element.  On the back of each stack, I glued a square of scrapbook paper in green or red. So there were 8 Skylanders that had a red square on the back, and 8 Skylanders with a green square.  Then I covered each of these with clear contact paper to make them a little more sturdy. I drew big circles on some corrugated squares, so that my daughter could draw each element inside the circles. The circles were probably 3 feet in diameter.  She drew the symbol for each element inside these, and then we used crayons and markers to color them in to make them look like each element.  I cut these circles out, and taped them onto dowel rods, that I pushed into the ground around the party area. These obviously doubled as a decoration as well. While everyone was eating, my husband and brother-in-law hid all 16 Skylanders.  Because we had the party at a park, we had a lot more room for them to spread out and hide these! 

I was going to divide the kids into two teams, red and green, depending on the ribbon of their necklace, and then each TEAM was going to have to find the 8 elements with THEIR color square on the back.  Each Skylander also had a piece of double sided tape on the back, so that they could affix it to the correct element.  The poster showing what Skylanders are in each element was hung on a nearby wall of the pavilion so that kids and parents had a reference if they didn’t know much about Skylanders.  Since we only had about 6 kids show up, and 3 of them were young(my youngest daughter, and nieces), we actually didn’t do ‘red and green’ teams.  I just let them go.  I wanted to explain that though, because I did plan to make it a little competitive, as in the first team to get all 8 Skylanders and put them on their correct Element, would win.  The kids had a real good time running around finding these!!!  Even the younger kids. I guess, it was kind of like an easter egg hunt for them, ha!  :) 

The next game we played was called Eruptor’s Volcanic Eruption.  My husband made a sign for this that had a picture of Eruptor on it.  The wording looked like red/yellow/orange lava or fire.  It was neat!  Again, I mounted this on cardboard, and taped to a dowel rod and then put this in the ground near the game area.  Well, for this game, I bought an 8-pack of small diet coke bottles.  I also bought some mentos breath fresheners.  If you’ve ever seen myth-busters, you could probably guess where this is going.  I opened up a bottle of diet coke, and put it inside an empty ice cream bucket.  Then I had the kids stand on the end of a picnic table seat, one at a time(I held their hand), and attempt to drop a mento into the diet coke.  When the mento goes into the diet coke, it ‘erupts’!!!!  Well, the kids were having a hard time doing this so then we let them stand on the ground and try it, and finally we ended up letting each kid just put their mento into the diet coke.  Ha!  Towards the end my husband said, ‘why not try using 2 mentos to see if it erupts higher’.  Which it DID!  And the kids thought this was so much fun!  I had a younger crowd of kids that were fairly easy to impress!  :) 

The next game was a variation of musical chairs. We had printed out each element onto regular cardstock, and I layed them on the seats around a picnic table.  I was careful to try to get the kids to each have a Skylander necklace that were from the different elements. The object of this game was for them to march around the table, and when the music stopped, try to get to THEIR element to sit down!  The element that matched their Skylander necklace.  I don’t know how this was really going to work, because we only had 6 kids, and so each kid would find their element and sit each time.  So, it was more of a musical scramble.  The kids had so much fun just doing this, that we just started and stopped the music about 5 times or more and let them ‘march and scramble’.  I guess what I’m trying to say, is that there was no real point to this game, and there was no real winner, but they all had fun doing it!!  Ha! 

The last game was called Prism Break’s Prism Break.  The sign for this had a picture of Prism Break, with him holding a prism, and the font was kind of a boxy/prism type font.  It was neat.   The signs really added to the décor.  Well, we used to have a fish aquarium, and when we got rid of this, I just dumped the stones by my downspout outside.  Well, I remember that we had a couple plastic ‘gem stones’ and I went to see if they were still there, and sure enough, they were!!  So, these gem stones that I used are actually aquarium stones. They are kind of big though not tiny like these stones, they are probably about 1/2 3/4 in diameter.  A week or so prior to the party, I froze these stones in layers, inside 2 tupperware tubs.  I wanted a tub that was kind of deep, an ice cream tub would probably work well.  I didn’t want all of the stones to be in one layer, so I put 2 stones it the bottom, then I froze them in about 2 of water.  Then the next day, I put 2 more stones in, and froze another 2 of water.  And so on, so each ice block had about 8 stones frozen in them, that were all spread out.  Each kid got to break a prism out of the ice.  My daughter has a small hammer that’s a real hammer, so it worked very well for the kids.  If you’re worried about them doing this you can provide some safety glasses. So, one at a time, each child got to hammer at this ice, until they got a stone free. My 3 year old niece was even able to do it!!  The prism stones that I used worked out perfect because when they got hit with a hammer, they didn’t break or anything. This game was a blast!

PARTY FAVORS: After all the games, each child was able to pick out a glow bracelet, a pencil, and a sweet-tart candy. The games were cheaply done, as well as decorations, and I let my daughter pick out a few things at the dollar tree to hand out as favors. 

CAKE: I’m going to start out by saying that I am not good at decorating cakes.  That is my mom's expertise. Well, I wanted to give this a try on my own so what I ended up doing was making a circle cake that was about 7-8 in diameter.  I frosted this white, and then I used a flat tip to pipe black stripes around the cake, staggering them around the top.  Then I used a small writing tip, and I piped a thin green line around the bottom part of the cake. This ended up (miraculously) looking like the game portal that is used to set the Skylanders on during game play. The green line around the bottom made it look like it was ‘on’ because the portal glows when it’s in use. 

Anyways from there, I made cupcakes. We frosted the cupcakes in different colors to symbolize the different elements so some were frosted red(for fire), some blue(for water and air), some a tan color(for tech and earth), some purple(for magic), some green(for life), and so on. We used the stickers out of that sticker book that I spoke of earlier, and mounted these on scrapbook paper. Then I covered these in clear contact paper and cut out.  Then taped a craft type popsicle stick to the back.  Then we put these ‘cupcake toppers’ into each cupcake that matched their element.  Some of the toppers were the element symbols themselves, and some were actual Skylanders. I put the cake portal up on a cake pedestal, and then surrounded this by the cupcakes. This turned out really neat, coming from me.  Ha!  I am not good at decorating cakes, so I was very pleased with how this turned out. We wrapped the party up with my daughter opening her presents. 

For Skylanders being somewhat new. I was very pleased with how well this party came together.  I did find some ideas on some different blogs online, but my daughter and I brainstormed a lot of things ourselves.  I had a lot of compliments, and my daughter had a WONDERFUL birthday!!