Molly's Masterpiece Art Party: #5

Our BIG Molly girl is officially 5 years old!  To celebrate, we had a fun arty party the day before Labor Day (her real birthday).  She loves using art supplies--the good ones, namely...PAINT. So we built a party around that and had a lovely creative time with cousins galore.

I turned the dining room into Molly's Gallery and put her artwork on display.  Some were faves from preschool last year and others were done at home this summer.  The best part was that she named every piece so I labeled them with the artist-given title and medium (or best guess) a la the real deal galleries.

Picasso's PBJ Palettes

 The menu was super simple:  sandwiches and chips.  Molly's sandwich of choice is always PBJ but there were hot ham and cheese and turkey and cheese rolls for everyone else to choose from.  I was inspired by the "uncrustables" shape to try cutting the PBJ's into paint palettes and they turned out cute!  MiMi made the sandwiches and cut them out with a round cutter and then used a mini oval cutter for the finger hole.

Van Gogh's Veggies and Dip

Paint Chips and Dip

Creative Juices (or more accurately, tea and lemonade)

Table decor was thanks to some Home Depot paint chips, IKEA placemats circa 2009ish, and the same Target frames I used as place cards for her circus party.  Easy (cause Pop's the one who taped down the paper and placemats!) and free:)

An art party has obvious built-in activities.  I found these wonderful paintbrush sets from IKEA and decided they (along with whatever projects were made) would be the parting gift for guests.  I wanted to personalize them especially since 4 of the sets (that's 4x6=24 brushes total) would be going home with the same family.  I stamped their names on the brushes with thicker handles but the smaller round brushes wouldn't fit the stamps...so I thought about wrapping washi tape around the bottom which proved to be rather expensive for that many different patterns.  Then MiMi suggested we paint them...DUH!  We started with Molly's and used acrylic paint.  It worked fine but then she suggested fingernail polish.  I was skeptical at first but I had plenty of colors and when we tried it they turned out beautifully, dried quickly, and had a shiny lacquered look that was durable.  

Saving egg cartons comes in handy every once in awhile.  Here are the painted paintbrush handles drying.

They looked darling all bundled up and ready to be used at the party.  Everyone had a can out of the recycling bin to hold their rinse water.

Pop and Ryan set up the first art project in the playroom.  Everyone had a canvas with their initial cut out of contact paper.  They painted on the canvas and then we removed the letter sticker to reveal their initial.  They really took their time with this and made some cool looking canvases.  It was fun to watch!  I borrowed the tabletop easels and plastic paint palettes from the art teacher at school which added some free authenticity to the experience:)!

Molly's, before the M was peeled away

The next project was Sharpie tie-dying (I wanted projects that I already had all the materials for) and we tried the technique on pillowcases:

I don't have great pictures of how they turned out but they did turn out for the most part.  Next time I would try something a little smaller (I think cloth napkins would be great!) because a whole pillowcase was a lot of ground to cover in a little bit of time.  Also, Kara had a good idea of putting the alcohol in a spritzer bottle (which I didn't have) which may use less alcohol.  I wish I'd experimented more beforehand so I could've given more direction about which designs and colors bled best but I threw this party together at the very last minute so that didn't happen.

The next project was a guided draw that I found here.  It caught my eye and I thought it'd be fun with good results.  I should have had them use a larger sheet of paper but otherwise they turned out wonderfully!

We used watercolor paper and tempera cakes.

As for the cake, it was also a last minute decision.  I remembered that I had seen Starry Night cupcakes in a cupcake book Ryan bought me long ago plus I had a great ornate gold frame to display them in so I showed Molly a picture of Van Gogh's painting and told her about the cupcakes and she was excited about it so that's what I did.  It photographed well (much better than it looked in person) and if you squinted a bit it almost looked sort of like the sample in the book.  

My masterpiece with a book light to enhance the gallery feel

Here's the birthday girl!:

She just kept smiling so I kept taking pictures:

It was so much fun having both sets of grandparents and almost all her cousins, aunts and uncles.

Here she is modeling a favorite gift of the day, an Elsa costume from Grandma Dot:

And reading her new big girl Bible with Daddy before bed:

A special party for a special girl.  I hope to post all her other birthday happenings plus her 5 year birthday questions next:)