Pom Pom flower and Doodle Chalkboard

Tissue Pom Pom Flowers

 As promised, I've listed the 'how-to' below from the birthday parties. For the pom pom flower deco, it was actually an idea I got from Martha Stewart's tissue paper pom pom tutorial.  I've bought the tissue paper pack from Spotlight. It was sold at a pack of 4 colours with 6 sheets for each colour. Can't remember the price. My hubby did the tissue flower pom pom as I was really tied up with the chalkboard.

He used 6 sheets of the same colours and cut equally into half to make a total of 12 sheets. Fold about 1" wide accordion fold to make the crease. You can refer to the tutorial for the step by step guide at the Martha's website. The steps are quite easy but labour intensive as you got to peel open the tissue pieces to make it full.  The pink and green ones are made as above but the blue one was from 6 sheets without cutting. We made the blue one first so it was a trial piece. It was not as full. So I guess you will need at least 10 sheets for it to be full and fluffy.

Doodle Chalkboard

This I like. Had first saw this from Disney's blog on her doodle chalkboard she made for her daughter.  Thought it would be a great idea to give them away as a Thank you gifts for the children that came for her party since most of them are around the age of 3 to 7 years.  Bought 35 pieces of the 1 feet plywood from a shop at Jalan Beser Road. It cost at $1 per piece.

For the chalkboard paint, I initially had a hard time finding them. I first bought one "Ronseal" (the last one at the shop) from DIY shop at Marina Square at $22. But it was not enough, just managed to cover only 15 pieces after 2 coats. Finally found some at Spotlight at $16.95 -"Derivan". It's abit different as the Ronseal as it seems to be more thinner and dry matt. The Ronseal looks abit glossy when dried. But both are ok.  Later on, I found alot more with variety of colours at the Craft shops at Bras Basah Complex at $15! Ok, I was rushing for time and did my search on the net thinking that it would save me time. But realised that if I had just visit those craft shops at Bras Basah, it would have saved me time.

left one is from DIY and right one from Spotlight

My hubby helped to paint the plywood. Coat first layer and left to dry overnight. He finished the 2nd coat in the morning before he left for work each morning. Thank God for good husband : )



When they are dried, I've binded the 4 sides with tape that I bought from Spotlight (black binding tape) and Daiso (pink tape). The one from Spotlight was much stronger and thicker so it really binds well but it is only available in black, dark green and yellow. So I bought another similar tape (not the binding type) from Daiso at $2. I love Daiso. Everything here is $2. It's a similar concept to the 199 yen shop in Japan. The outlet at Plaza Singapura level 5 had the widest selection, besides the IMM Jurong outlet. Although it's not really a binding tape and abit thin, I can't help but bought them as the pink tape was so pretty.  As it was quite wide, I've cut them into 2 equal strips to bind the borders. Just tape them around the 4 borders to cover up the raw edges.

black border at left for the boys and pink border at right for the girls

I've used acrylic paint to draw free-hand on each board. Basically, flowers for girls and clouds, trees, fishes for the boys. Ok, I'm not very creative but I really love pink and can't stop using them to paint the flowers. Big ones, small ones, tulip etc. I've bought many boxes of multi-coloured chalks from Ikea and put them into set of 4 for each chalkboard. The plastic bag for the chalks and chalkboards were all from Daiso. The small plastic bags have Hello Kitty print on them and were $2 for 80 bags while the bigger ones for the chalkboards are at $2 for 7 bags.  I've pouch a hole on the bag and insert a ribbon of pink, blue or green over them.   

Added a special thank you note using the 3 colour scheme. The note will serve as an instruction on the use of the board as well. Do you like the font? It's the Pea Noodle Girlfriends font that I've downloaded free from fonts for peas. They have so many other cute fonts that you can download and use. I'm still exploring how to load up to my blog. Cute isn't it?

Puzzle Board

This is not a tutorial as this is so easy. I downloaded 7 pictures from Disney.com on some Toy Story and Pixie characters and cut them into 6 pieces.  Had intended to use my inkjet printer to print but printer ink just ran out. So, I dropped by at Bras Basah and make use of the printing service there to save me the time. Cost $2 per piece since I've used a thicker paper. I've use the 3M Post-it Cut-to-fit Display board for this puzzle. It's very sticky so the kids could paste the puzzle ontop and resort if they have finish and paste another one on them. After the party, I could use this board in my girls' room to display her painting and drawing too.

The possibilities are endless when you come to the ideas for children parties. Just have to go along with the theme and do what you fancy. I'm actually looking forward to my niece's birthday coming in September as I'll get to plan and organise it!