This party was for my son's 7th birthday which occurred on a particularly warm Saturday in April. I was really lucky with the weather. Some years there is still snow on the ground in April. I guess Global Warming can have it's benefits.
The motivation around creating this party is two-fold. Firstly because I wanted my son to have a great party. He was very big into Angry Birds this last year making countless drawings of them. Amazing drawings that I used to decorate the house with. The second motivating factor is the creativity of it. I love to make things. I love to put a huge project together and make it work. I loved all the elements of this. When I create a party I usually have one thing that inspires me and everything revolves around it. I will spend a lot of time researching online looking for ideas that I can either copy or that will spark a new idea of my own. There wasn't a lot out there on Angry Bird parties but I was inspired by the life size Angry Bird structure that someone had made and that is what motivated me to create this party for my son. So it began with the invitations.
THE INVITATIONS
These are the invitations. My son made the pig to the left which I still have and love. If I could have gotten him to make 12 more of them I would have used his instead. Unfortunately an almost 7 year old's focus is limited. I never took a picture of the invitation itself but I most definitely used the words "dastardly pigs".
The next thing I worked on were the parts I needed to make for the Angry Birds structure and here they are:
THE BIRDS AND PIGS
After the invitations I set out to paint all of these balls that I had bought at Walmart, Toys R US and the Dollar store. Luckily they had some good colors. I bought large green balls for big pigs as well as some smaller ones. I found yellow and red balls and I may have found a blue one.
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| Still need to paint outline around head feather |
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I used Gesso to undercoat
so the color would show up |
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| These were really fun to make. |
I made a good amount of pigs. Some big and some small, some with helmets and some without.
The ears on this pig I made with green and black card stock. I covered them with package tape to give it a protected laminated affect. If you had a laminator that would work well. I taped the ears on the ball with package tape. It worked very well. I wasn't concerned by the look of it as I knew that the kids wouldn't care either. I put party hats on the pigs. I made sure to buy a bright shinny hats - some big and some small. I used packing tape to tape them down.
So after making all these balls I started to become worried that the bird balls would not be heavy enough to get the right amount of power to knock over the boxes. Just to be safe I spray painted an old soccer ball red and painted the face of the red bird on it. I am really glad that I did that because it was the ball with with the most power though all the balls were equally used.
THE MAKING OF THE STRUCTURE
The next order of business was to start painting cardboard boxes that I had collected of all sizes. I got a bunch of them from a liquor store. I tried to get as many sizes as possible. This was probably the single most tedious part of the project. In retrospect I would have painted the boxes a lighter brown color. The tedious part was that I painted over all of the printed lettering on the boxes with gesso; which is a white acrylic paint used to prime canvases before an artist paints. This was very time consuming and I was lucky that I had some very sunny days to paint outside. I tried to paint all the boxes differently and even made a few TNT boxes. Here are the boxes painted but not taped back together yet.
I had a bunch of insulation board left over from a Halloween party I had thrown so I made all the cross boards with them. This is the insulation board before I painted it:
Here is a picture of some of the boards after I painted them:
Since this was a birthday themed Angry Birds party I based the scene on the Angry Birds Birthday game. In my mind's eye I pictured flag banners and balloons tied all over it AND I needed some fake cakes. I made two out of foam insulation and decoupaged them with tissue paper. I used some tinsel to put around the cake layers and added candles. Here is the work in progress and the completed cakes below that.
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| In the making |
I used blue and pink ribbon around both cakes.
After I completed all of these props I couldn't wait to set it up. I did so inside my house in the evening and so the pictures are a little dark.
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| Pig with party hat |
THE SLINGSHOT
Next order of business was creating the sling shot. That is where my husband came in. If a husband doesn't exist no worries. It wasn't that difficult to create. However we happened to have two long pipes. I don't know why we had these or how we came upon them but luckily we had. What my husband did was bury each pole at opposing angles crossing each other. Then duct taped the poles together at the cross. (Thank god for duct tape.) I created the ball holder and I used two yoga stretch bands for the sling. Worked great, amazing even.
Here is pouch on the slingshot that holds the ball: I made it out of vinyl.
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| Slingshot pouch. Ball sits in this part |
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Back part of pouch with handle to grab
as you pull back the ball. |
Here are some pictures of the entire slingshot;
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Birthday boy about to launch a bird
We duct taped the top of the pipes because
they were pretty rough. |
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| Before the fun. |
THE STRUCTURE
I put caution tape around the entire structure before the party as I was worried that as soon as the kids showed up they would head right for it.
The next pictures is the actual structure the day of the party. My sister and I set the whole thing up. We went inside to blow up balloons and the entire structure blew over due to the wind that day. Sigh....We re-built it and put rocks on top of the boards to hold the whole thing down until the guests arrived. Once the party started it didn't matter anymore. It was a blast. The adults and children all had fun building and re-building the structure taking turns with the slingshot trying to knock the pigs down. I gave party favors out each child after they had their turn. Here are pictures of the structure:
Both pictures before the party started. I also used that vinyl blow up Easter egg in the structure.
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| One of the rebuilds of the structure |
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| The aftermath |
THE GOLDEN EGGS
After the kids had several turns with the slingshot they got a clue that led them to a balloon that had another clue that would lead them to a golden egg. I used golden Easter Eggs that you can buy and fill. I had bought some small angry bird bean bag toys but could not find enough so ended up making the rest. I stuffed them inside of the Easter eggs.
I decorated all the balloons with Bird pig faces or bird faces. I got the template for this online and printed them all. Used scotch tape to tape onto balloons. Here is a picture of them scattered around my yard. It is April so the grass is still brown and no leaves on the trees yet. They are tied to a little white box that had a stone inside of it to hold the balloon down. And a clue was tied to the box.
Here is a picture of the Golden egg favor they found:
And these are what I stuffed inside the eggs. The Angry bird to the left is the one I made:
THE CAKE
The next part is the cake that I created. I got the idea off YouTube video of a cake that a man had made for his son. It is a fully working angry birds cake with a sling shot. I made all the pigs and birds out of fondant. That was another favorite project.
The first thing I got for the cake was a board and a slingshot. I found the slingshot at an old general store. I had this party in April 2012 before all the new Angry Bird stuff came out so it was really difficult finding some of these things. Now you can find Angry Bird stuff anywhere.
I got a board and drilled a hole in it and sank the slingshot in the hole poured wood glue into it. My husband actually helped with this part. I covered the board with tin foil and then covered the tinfoil with green frosting. Basic butter cream frosting. Then i used cake and built layers. I put down a mound of cake as well. I used a chocolate frosting the cover the cake and mound and made it grassy in parts with a decorating tip and the green frosting.
Here are some pictures:
This is the cake board that i covered in frosting. Apparently I was rather neat about it.
The basic cake layers
Here is the basic cake frosted and ready for the structure.
I used cookie bars for the structure. I think they are a Keebler brand cookie bar. They were amazingly good too. I remember wondering what kind of chemicals they put in the cookies because I really wanted to keep eating them. Also the chocolate frosting was amazing too.
Two views of the cake with the pigs on the structure.
The finished cake.
A close up of the fondant birds and pigs that I made for the cake.
What is left after cake?
THE PARTY FAVORS
As you may have already been able to tell I was on a low budget. Which is relative, I suppose, since I did end up spending quite a bit of money regardless but less than had I not made all that I did. I made a lot of the party favors also because there were no Angry Bird party favors that were less than $5 a piece. Nor could I see spending $3 each for one party favor for 16+ children. So I had to get creative. It is the gesture that counts right? I did buy angry bird stickers and perhaps one other thing.
I ended up making magnets and my son and I made shrinky dinks. These were adorable- especially the ones that my son drew. I also made pins that had the children's names on them that they could wear when they showed up.
Here are the pictures;
I bought these plexiglass type squares and decoupaged Angry Bird pictures
onto them. Then I glued magnets on the back. Got this idea off the Internet.
Shrinky dinks. My son free hand drew his birds.
I put the plastic over some drawings and traced them.
Yes I am a cheater pants.
These are the pins.
Party favor bags. My son drew all these fantastic Angry Bird drawings
seen above the bags on the wall. I decorated the house with them.
I also made these decorations that hung down from the ceiling:
THE PIG CANS
One last thing I made for the party was this:
Tomato sauce cans with pig faces made out of colored paper stock. Same material I used for the invitations. And I painted some smaller balls. I still use these cans all over the house holding pens and scissors and 'what have you's'. They came in handy.
And there it is. The Angry Birds Party.
