Hi, everyone! Today I have a birthday party from earlier this month to share with you I did for my mother. Although this is an adult party, this theme could also be used for children or teens, for anyone of any age. I did not come up with this great idea, but my mother asked for this theme. I went with a colorful but kind of autumn-themed color palette of the complimentary colors orange and blue, along with lots of rustic/vintage browns and some white. I took a page out of a large children's book I got at a thrift store a long time back for the poster because the book had lovely, scenic, autumn and to me, poetic sort of illustrations. The book is called "Ox-Cart Man" by Donald Hall. I displayed a poetry book I had on hand featuring Robert Frost. I used my usual pegboard for the background, and on that I taped lots of leaves from my yard and a local trail that had fallen. On each leaf, I wrote with marker a poetry term/form of poetry, such as "Epic Poetry", "Ode", "Sonnet", "Limerick", etc. I used lots of greenery from my grandparent's yard to wrap in between the balloons. I added more nature with a log I had on hand, natural-looking handmade pottery I made in Ceramics I, and other naturally-colored decor. I dyed the sides of streamers to add the orange to them by painting the roll with watered-down acrylic paint. It took days to dry, by the way, so do that in advance if you choose to do that! I had originally made them for a different party and could not use them for that.
For party favors, I printed out different poems for each guest to choose from by famous poets such as Shel Silverstein, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Lewis Carroll. I found them online, made collages, printed those on brown and gold card-stock, and cut them into separate squares. For each poem, I made a polymer clay magnet that I molded, baked, painted with acrylic paints, painted with clear gloss, and epoxied to magnets that I then tied onto the card-stock with the poems using string by poking holes into the card-stock to tie the string through. Some of the magnets still fell out, so I had to use tape, too, on the backs of the magnets. To be honest, I think I did the whole thing the morning of due to a lack of inspiration up until that point. It is amazing what prayer, pressure, panic, procrastination and deadlines can accomplish in a small amount of time.
Thank you for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed! I look forward to sharing more events and tutorials with you soon.
-Lauryn