birthday crafting season

It’s birthday month again! When I posted last year about my love for birthday crafting, and how I wanted another baby so I’d have two parties to plan every year, a wise commenter reminded me that two kids means half the time to plan. Yep, that’s about right. That second kid is totally cramping my style this year. But he’s sweet, so I’m trying not to hold it against him.

I have found a little time to play around, though. There’s no real theme this year, just keeping things colorful and birthday-partyish. I found some birthday balloon rubber stamps at my local crafty store, Collage, and used those to make invitations. I sewed the balloon strings by machine with silver thread. The stamps are made by Yellow Owl Workshop and they have lots of great stamp sets to check out if you’re into that sort of thing.

I thought it might be fun to have a birthday party craft, so courtesy of Pinterest, we’ll be making paper straw necklaces. Lila will sit for big blocks of time making bead jewelry, so this seemed like a good choice.

Lots of Etsy sites will let you choose your own mix of 25 or 50 paper straws – I got an assortment and cut them into beads.

For anyone wanting to try this – the straws are very sturdy, so cutting with a scissors flattens the ends of the beads. An exacto knife worked better – start with a sawing motion and then continue through the straw. I made my beads a little less than 3/4 inch long, and you can get about 10 beads to a straw.

All that straw cutting was a little time consuming, but hey, you only turn four once.

And speaking of four, I also decorated some plain white cups with washi tape 4s. So easy, plus I had to capitalize on the fact that a 4 consists of all straight lines – that won’t happen again until she’s 7, and after that not til she’s 11, and who knows if she’ll want me washi taping her party cups by then. But I digress.

And to go along with the cups, a washi-foured circle garland:

This year was fun because Lila was very involved in the crafting process. She cut, stamped, taped, glued, punched, and beaded right alongside me, and had all sorts of wild almost-four-year-old ideas to contribute.

Okay, still a few more days to prep, I best get back to work!

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