Miss E's Mermaid Party - The Decorations

E's birthday party was yesterday and it went brilliantly. The 15 little girls who came along all behaved beautifully and the birthday girl had a blast. I've just downloaded 137 photos of the day so I think I'm going to have to share the party with you in sections! Today, I'll show you the decorations and tell you a little bit about where the ideas and tutorials came from so you can copy them if you want to for your own mermaid or under the sea party. Here goes:

Fish in seaweed curtains.

These are pretty self explanatory to make. Take crepe paper in 2 different colours and cut a slightly curved line through all layers of the folded up paper. Cut another curvy line about 6cm apart until you've cut up all the paper. Unfold the crepe paper and staple it over string. Print out fish from here and cut them out. Staple them in place.


More crepe paper ribbons loosely knotted over the curtain rail



Fish net covering our book case

I bought 4m of bird net off  Trade Me to make the fish net. My girls decorated and cut out fish shapes and I stapled them to the net.

The party bag table

I bought these gorgeous under the sea paper boxes off another Trade Me seller. Instead of filling them before the party, the party guests won the contents of their take home box by playing games. Everyone got the same prizes but I found that getting the kids to put their own take home gifts away meant that they didn't empty the bags out just before they left (which normally happens) and I didn't get any treats left behind by any of the guests. They also put the things they made at the party in them and one child even put her shoes in the box to make sure she didn't forget them!

I named each party box and showed the girls where they were. All the girls were old enough to recognise their name.

I made this Mermaid and another out of different coloured card. They are now on E's bedroom wall. 





These are some of the decorations in our basement. We set up a staging area for the Mermaid entertainer down there so we could finish preparing the food (and have a cup of tea in peace!) before the kids all came upstairs again. The white fabric with the shells on is a shower curtain that I purchased for $2 from our local emporium. I got 5 of them so I was able to cover up most of the walls and shelves (which were full of very distracting toys as this is where our kids play!). I closed the curtains so it was quite dark down there and put on a low light to really give the impression that they were underwater. The girls walked through blue streamers to get into the room. The mermaid was brilliant and the kids all absolutely loved her. It's the second time I've used an entertainer from An Enchanted Party and they are worth every cent. I think my now 7 year old slept with the fairy dust given to her at her 5th birthday party under her pillow for about a year and when I went to drop the girls at school this morning, several of the party guests came up to me to talk to me about Melody the Mermaid. One Mum told me that her daughter hadn't stopped talking about how the Fairy Queen had granted Mermaid Melody legs for the day so she could come to E's party. Very cute!

And here's our little mermaid. I bought the costume from America via Ebay but I have seen a similar one on Trade Me. I don't think they are designed to last (more of a one off Halloween costume) and E's costume had split down the side by the end of the day. She loved wearing it though so it was well worth it and I can mend it so all is not lost!

I'll show you the food tomorrow if you want to see more!