Girly Spa Party

My baby girl turns 7 in a couple of weeks.  With summer birthday around a holiday, we have chosen to hold her party a couple of weeks early.  This works great for being able to pass invites out at school and catching friends before the frenzy of summer travel and activities.

This year we did a spa party.  Back in February a local spa had a half-price deal on one of the local deal sites for a party for 6 girls.  The price was right and the wheels were in motion for a fun party.

With such a fun inspiration and theme we set out to create a fun day for the girls.  Given that the party was limited to my daughter and just 5 of her besties, it was easy to go all out.  Couple that with some amazing clearance deals from the dollar section at Michael's and a few craft projects it was an amazing party!

To start, I searched Pinterest and created an inspiration board.  We loved these nail polish invitations so that is what we started with.  They were a definite hit!

This was our starting off point.  We next started going crazy with the pink, black and zebra theme.

The party started at the spa with painted nails, edible chocolate facials, up-dos, face paint, body glitter art and making their own bath salts.  If you have a spa near you, I would totally look into doing this.  The girls had a ball being pampered!

Then we headed home for a fun photo shoot. I scoured my daughters room for hats, boas, sunglasses and more. The girls glammed up and I took their pictures - the entire group, BFF's and individuals. The back drop was simply a dollar store pink plastic table cloth stapled to the wall and embellished with some black & pink crepe paper. I quickly edited a few photos using PicMonkey and sent them off to Walgreen's. Each of the girls got to take their photos home with them.

Pizza and cake were a big hit.  The girls loved the nail polish cake.  I used 4 6" cake rounds, stacked up and topped with a stack of 3 cupcakes for the wand lid. The surprise for the cake was in the layers.  I did 2 layers of zebra stripes using rings of chocolate and strawberry cake sandwiched between a pure chocolate and pure strawberry layer.  The girls loved this.

Decorations were kept simple but the highlight was the handmade nail polish pinata.  I had seen a similar one online for approximately $23 (after shipping) and knew I could make one for way less.  Using a structure made out of a single sheet of poster board, I taped it together, added a couple layers of paper mache and covered with strips of tissue paper that had been cut to look like fringe.  Easy 2 hour project (over the course of 2-days due to drying time) for less that $4.  Technically it was free because I already had everything in my craft room to make this!

We didn't end up using the pinata since we simply ran out of time with all of the other activities.  My daughter is excited to use it as a decoration in her room.

One of the first gift bag projects I came up with was a hand mirror.  Hoping to find a pink mirror at the dollar store with no luck I found these great black ones.  I simply used some pink zebra scrapbook paper cut to the shape of the mirror and applied with a couple layers of decoupage.  The girls loved these (and so did I).

I lucked out one afternoon at Michael's when I found a variety of items including bath fizzies, bath poufs, small pink frames and these great journals for 25 cents each.  Using some zebra scrapbook paper, I simply cut a new cover to size and used spray glue to adhere them to the journal to fit the theme.  Total cost of the gift bags was under $3 each.

This left room to do a couple of craft projects to help fill the time.  This was a sleep over party and our spa appointment was at noon so we had a lot of time to fill.  The girls made ribbon flip flops using some ribbon I found at the discount fabric store in town (3 rolls for $1 - score) and pink flip flops I found on sale at Michael's for $1.25 each.  I also bought some $1 wood picture frames and 50 cent craft paint to make a photo frame for one of the photo booth pics!

Finally, since no party is complete with out thank you cards, I took one of my daughters photos and created a thank you card using PicMonkey.  (Have I said how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE PicMonkey - well I really do!)

How fun is the posterize effect with one of the newest features - sketchedy mats.  So fun!  Any who, we sent these to Walgreen's and will be mailing them out this week!

Now that the party is over, it is time to actually get ready for her actual birthday! AND I NEED A SPA DAY!!!

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