My adorable nephew Sebastian was turning 1, and I couldn’t resist offering to make some decorations for his first birthday party, which was “Little Monster” themed. I managed to whip these decorations up in 2-3 days, and really enjoyed my “alone time” with my trusty cricut machine, my hot glue gun and my sewing machine. I focused my efforts solely on styling the dessert table as that’s where I could make the biggest impact rather than spreading the decorations out throughout the location.
Here’s a preview of the final product:
Here are some of the details:
Little Monster card cut outs
These cute little guys were super easy to design as I just used existing monster Cricut images rather than designing something myself. I picked my four favorite monsters and made them in a variety of sizes, varying the colors between blue, green, yellow and orange. Half way through I realized that they would look even cooler with googly eyes, so I started adding them in, but ran out of energy to replace every single one. The smallest cut outs worked really well as cupcake toppers, and I also attached some of them in a line along kitchen rolls to look like a little monster tower.
Happy Birthday Banner
This was easy, but a little time consuming to create. I used a cricut banner font that seemed to have a the right feel for the theme. I then cut out each letter, hot glue gunned each to a black background and then added string. In retrospect I could have totally skipped the black background behind each letter since I ended up hanging them against a blackboard, but I didn’t have any idea on what the background would be, so better to be safe than sorry. I added little monsters on the sides like they were holding the banners up.
Bright colored bunting
I love bunting. It’s the Brit in me. I have cut and sewed bunting into a dozen different color schemes, but didn’t have one that was perfect for this party. So I grabbed half a yard each of cheap yellow, orange, blue and green cotton at the fabric store along with 20 yards ish of bright colored ribbon. I cut each bunting flag out using pinking shears (with 3 or 4 layers of fabric at the same time to save time as well as the inevitable hand ache!) using the angles per the bunting templates you can find online. I use 5/8″ ribbon usually, and to sew them onto the ribbon you simply fold the ribbon in half along the top of the bunting and use a wide zig zag stitch to secure it. I leave half an inch between each flag, and make sure there are longish tails of ribbon on either end so you can tie it in place wherever you end up hanging them. I usually hang them on my staircase until the party so they don’t get too creased, as ironing 20 yards of bunting is not one of my favorite pastimes.
Wooden “One” sign
I stole was inspired for this idea from Pinterest as I thought it was so cute. I found black wooden letters on clearance at Michaels and as a first step I spray painted them in the color scheme. For the letter N, I wanted to use a zig zag pattern so I found some patterned paper at Michaels, traced around the letter and then added it to the front using mod podge. I attached a few of the small card monsters onto the letter E. For the letter O I wrapped some green fake fur fabric around the letter and glued it in place. I crudely cut out some white teeth and glued them on the back, and did the same with some card horns. The final step was adding a pair of googly eyes.
Other decor
I had a bunch of silk flowers in the color scheme that I had picked up on clearance from Michaels last summer, so I used those liberally on the dessert table in bright colored vases. I didn’t have quite enough vases so I spray painted some glass juice bottles with the turquoise color. I also rummaged around my house for any other bright colored containers to use, and I found a couple of monster plastic containers at Dollar Tree (they were actually Easter baskets!).
Anyway, I was pleased that I could pull this together in just a few days, and I’m so glad I was able to help celebrate this little cutie monster (and no, I don’t mean my brother-in-law)!
Christine's Creations 