pirate party

Pirate Cupcakes

By Crystal VanTassel-Lopez 8 Comments

Love these (said in a singy-song-voice).

I love making cupcakes for my kids’ birthdays. I think I have officially said that 100 times on my blog now.

Sorry. But I do. It is fun to me.

But, I do not always have tons of time to bake them and decorate.

Imagine that.

Here are some fun and easy cupcakes I made for the twins’ birthday months ago.

It really can be simple to spruce up cupcakes to go with your birthday theme and not break the bank.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Start with your favorite boxed cake mix and make according to the directions.

Using some fun pirate cupcake liners can really spruce things up a bit. You can usually find pirate stuff year round, but especially keep an eye out at Halloween time. Grab it when it goes on clearance and stash it away. We chose these, which came with some cool pix.

Use my homemade buttercream icing recipe or use Wilton’s boxed version of whipped cream that always comes out perfect. (I use this stuff all the time.)

Then tint your icing any shade of blue you like. I mixed a teal and a royal blue- I wanted to capture the color of water. (I like Wilton’s gel icing tint.)

You’re going to use a big star tip, like the one pictured above, to ice the cupcakes.

The one in this picture is a Marpol 4B that I purchased at a local cake shop. Makes big waves on your icing.

The opal sanding sugar is perfect for sprinkling over the cupcakes once they are iced to give a shimmery watery look.

(The above picture is minus the sanding sugar, but you get the idea.)

Now, gather up the things you want to use to decorate. I bought a few small, plastic, inexpensive, pirate men that the birthday boys could keep as souvenirs. I also found some chocolate coins at the cake shop, but I’ve used plastic coins before as well. And the pix that came with your cupcake holders… and you’re one rockin’ mom!

Here are our finished cupcakes:

The kids love these and the parents cannot resist them either.

Soon, everyone will be pointing and laughing at one another with blue teeth and lips.

And don’t forget to pair these with super fun pirate birthday shirts and these affordable yummy party favors.

Affordable Birthday Shirt Tutorial

By Crystal VanTassel-Lopez 3 Comments

When it is your little one’s birthday, it is so much fun to celebrate their special day with a birthday shirt!

When the twins turned four I bought simple little shirts from Michael’s (craft store) that were two for $5.00.

I picked out some fabric that matched their birthday theme.

I purchased a fabric pencil, fabric paint and liquid stitch.

I also grabbed a wooden number to use as a template, but you could certainly use stencils or free-hand it.

My mother-in-law free-handed the letters we used for their names. Again, you could also use stencils.

1) Trace the letters and numbers to fabric using the fabric pencil.

2) Cut them out and then glue them down with the liquid stitch.

3) Trace around them with the fabric paint.

4) Let them dry for 5-7 hours and you are good to go!

Super simple and totally affordable!

Pirate Birthday Party Invitations

By Crystal VanTassel-Lopez 4 Comments

I used to be crafty.

Wait, I used to have time to be crafty.

The mom who l.o.v.e.d to plan her son’s birthday party, hand make the invitations, spend more than she should on entertainment, feed everyone, go all out!

Then…

then, I somehow had 14,000 children. Life is so different with one child vs. 14,000!

Once this happens, planning a birthday party and hand making the invitations quickly became few a far between.

Here is the other thing.

It is hard for me to create on a whim. I am visual and have to see ideas from other people. I can MAKE, but it is hard for me to CREATE. Make sense?

This is why I want to share this with you. In case you ever need some pirate birthday invitation ideas.

So, this is what you will need… and about 1 million available, free, aint got nothin’ better to do, hours of your life that you would like to give away as your children pull at your leg, tell you they are starving, and have meltdown after meltdown. The Twizzlers are defiantly key- here, now go. Here, have another one. Sure, Twizzlers for lunch….

See that awesome pirate stamp kit there (close to the Twizzlers and the scissors)? I borrowed them from a friend over.a.year.ago! They are made by Stampin’ Up. They were the key to my inspiration.

For the front…

I took the packet of 4×6 assorted earth tone colored card stock and stamped the pirate on the sage cards and cut them out with the ‘z’ shaped scissors. Then, I stamped the ‘you arrr invited’ onto the yellow toned paper and cut them out with the same scissors. Here they are:

Then, I purchased a sheet of scrapbook paper that reminded me of different colored wood planks. The name of the paper design is called Scarlett’s Letter. I cut it into strips using the scissors that if you turn them one way they cut fancy { looking things. If you turn them the other way, it looks like water waves. I cut it to look like the water waves to keep with a watery pirate theme. Sorry, I am sure there are names for all of these things, but I am completely out of the loop.

Next, I glued the pirates to yellow paper and cut them out and the ‘you arrr invited’ cut outs to brown paper. Here is what all of this looks like:

Then, I took blue glitter glue and using the cream colored card stock, I wrote the number 4 over and over again. I let them dry over night. They looked like this…

Then, I cut them out and here they are all in a pile.

I put mini Pop Dots on the back, which are self-adhesive foam mounts for creating three-dimensional crafts. Totally cool!

Now for the maps… fun! I took scrapbook paper that was decorated as an old vintage map- formal name, Sea Glass Antique Map. How perfect is this paper?

It was a 12 x 12 inch sheet of paper, I cut it into six pieces (approx 6 x 6 each).

Then, I tore each piece all the way around making tattered edges.

Over the kitchen sink, I burned the edges. When you are done, and all the edges have cooled, thump the map a few times and all the burned ashy edges will fall off. (*Warning* Little fire starters will be intrigued. Use caution. One of my twins quickly said ‘Momma, can I try?’)

Leaving you a map that looks like this…

Then stamp it with the red ‘x’ marks the spot:

Now you can glue everything down. You can see my finished decisions in the very first picture at the top of this post. Oh, and see that blue glue pen? Love it!

Now for the back…

I took a dark brown card and off centered it and glued it down.

I wrote a quick little poem with all the party details and printed it out on the cream colored cards. I then cut it down to the size you see below and glued it on top of the dark brown card off centered as well. This left plenty of room for the other pirate-y details I wanted to add.

Next I stamped the little birdy over and over again on the yellow card stock and then cut each one out (except for the one with the water droplet on it, ugh!). Then, I glued them down to the clay colored card stock and cut them again. I used the mini Pop Dots on the back when putting them on the card to give a 3D affect. I repeated the same process for the ‘ahoy matey’ stamp, which you will see in the final picture.

Notice my cut lines are not perfect? I am totally ok with that. Perfection is not what I seek- I like to call it character. I used hand scissors to cut most of this, as my 4 yr olds always seem to be around the table. And large table cutter + 4 yr old twins = one very nervous Momma!

Finally I stamped the ships on the clay colored card stock and cut using the ‘z’ shaped scissors. I then glued it to the sage card stock and cut again with the ‘z’ shaped scissors to make it look really wavy like water. (You can view these details on the last picture below.)

Affixed everything else to the back of the card, and this is the final result…

I addressed the envelopes to Matey _________ and from Captain Nick and Captain Luke. Although two of my sister-in-laws called to tell me I mis-spelled ‘Captin’ on the envelopes,ugh! The story of my life. Once again, totally ok with it. We laughed.

So there you have it. This worked for me…

Speaking of ‘works for me’, I am posting this over at We are That Family. Each week Kristen, hosts a link up for bloggers to share projects, ideas, and things that ‘work for them’! Check out this weeks list of submissions, where over 250 bloggers have shared the things that work for them!