Alisa's Arty Party!

My big sister turned a certain milestone age! Ok, she turned 40, and I wanted to make it a BIG deal. Like HUGE.

I think of everything my sister's done for me, and everything she is to me, and there's no way to put it in words or pay her back or plan a cool enough party to encompass it all.

But I wanted to try. I got together with her hubby and we planned a surprise. Then I used facebook to invite EVERYONE she knew - friends from long ago and new ones, family, church buddies, the works. I don't know what the protocol is for formal events or parties, is a facebook event invitation enough? Do you need to send emails? Actual physical invites? I'm not sure. For this one we went with facebook alone, and it worked well. I created a fun header to announce the theme, etc:

Then I got to work making things and planning the shindig. It was awesomely fun! My sister in law volunteered to make the cake, which I was sooooo thankful for since that is something I simply have not mastered.

She made a paint splatter cake and it looked so cool!

Alisa's hubby was in charge of dinner food, and went with a big old sub and lots of different chips. He also brought music to play throughout the whole night which was a nice touch in the background.

I put myself in charge of sweets, decor and entertainment.

We decided to have the party at our church, since there's a nice big gym where we could set up lots of tables, (and hopefully fill most of the seats.)

I made two different kinds of "buntings." One was a rainbow paint stick bunting, and the second was a paint brush bunting. I dipped the paint sticks in different paint and let them dry, then punched holes in the unpainted end with my cropadile and strung them on some twine. I spray painted the paintbrush handles rainbow colors and tied them on twine through their existing holes. I hung the paint stick buntings above the entrances and the paintbrush bunting above the guest "book" table.

(The guest book was a giant canvas. We had paint pens in a can and the instructions hanging on the wall told everyone to draw themselves and leave a note for Alisa.)

My mom helped me make the paint pallets that we propped up all over the room and the giant one on the wall behind the sweets table. They are foam board with splotches of paint for the paint. Imagine that.

For the sweets table I hung paint cans from fishing twine so they looked like they were spilling paint. It was tricky to do, but I finally got them just right. I poked holes in the bottoms of the cans and pulled the twine through, knotting and taping inside the can. I used double sided tape to tape the plastic tablecloths inside. If you're a details kind of person, you can tell I taped them in order so it looks like the primary colors on top are mixing to make the secondary colors on the table itself - Yellow and red, then orange under, red and blue, and purple under that, then blue and yellow with green between. I'm probably the only person in the world who notices things like that...

On the food table, I propped up two crib sides next to each other. I know, that sounds weird. But I have them spray painted white and I often use them for backdrops... you've likely seen them in other parties - like Gemma's baby shower. Anyway, I used plastic table cloths here too, and wove them in and out of the crib slats in alternating rows. Then I hung a paintbrush starburst wreath I had made with a paint can lid. I just glued those babies right on there.

On one wall, we made a big "40" out of photos of Alisa from all through her life. It was pretty fun, and people liked stopping and taking a look at all the old memories.

The tables for eating at had white plastic tablecloths with one colored plastic tablecloth down the middle like a table runner. Then I had a giant jar and a slightly smaller jar in the middle and each one had some different type of art supply in it. I hardly had to buy anything because I already had so much of it sitting at home! Glue sticks, watercolors, oil paints, tempra paints, pencils, colored pencils, markers, sharpies, sidewalk chalk, paper scraps, crayons, paintbrushes... I bought some swirly marbleized balloons on Amazon, they looked like paint swirls to me, and I put them on sticks and placed them in the jars.

The only other decor we had was at the entrance. I made a painting for my sister and I used it for decor as well. I just set it up on a table with a chalkboard welcome sign and some paintbrushes. I have a tutorial for how I made the canvas too!

Right across from the welcome table, I set up the favor table. My mom has a binder machine and I had her make a bunch of these little notebooks with plastic binding, then I used wash tape to tape a few crayons to each one. Easy and inexpensive.

So, for the sweets, we had the awesome cake, obviously. Then I made rice krispie treat paintbrushes, I just cut them in rectangles and stuck a craft stick in one end. We set them out with two little crockpots of candy melt - one that was white and one that was red, so you could dip your paintbrush in the candy "paint" and then eat it!

I also made layered jello cups which (although I don't really like jello) I thought looked super cool.

I dipped pretzel rods in candy melts and twirled the end a little so that they looked like smaller paintbrushes. Kind of. We put them in a paint can to show them off.

All the food - sweets and the other food and drink - had food labels. They were just wooden paint sticks I had written on with colored pens. The hardware store must have though I was crazy taking like 3,000 paint sticks...

For entertainment, we had a few different stations. First, was the Photo Booth. We had some frames and artsy type props set out. I made watercolor streamers by dip dyeing white paper streamers in watered down paint. You simply dip the roll in the dye. After you dip the edges in (leaving the center of the roll white), you just let them dry. Then when you unroll them it looks sort of like watercolor. I hung the streamers in front of a white sheet for the backdrop.

We set up a kids table in the middle and topped it with white paper and put crayons in jars along it so the kids could color on their tablecloth whenever they felt like it.

Then we had two different art projects set up, one for kids and one for adults. The kids project was making sun catchers with tissue paper and contact paper. The adult project was Zentangle (which is a favorite of Alisa's). I made triangle table toppers with the directions for both projects and set out some examples.

Finally, I set up a smash book station. Basically, the guests could decorate a page anyway they wanted to with memories of Alisa and I will take the pages and put them together into a memory book, smash book style. I hung directions up so people would know what to do.