Under the Sea Afternoon Tea

A belated Happy New Year!

Our New Year always has a delayed start, we have birthday after birthday until the middle of the month. My Mum's is on NYE, Ruby was a New Years Day baby and mine is on the 10th. As A result I don't feel like the new year properly starts until the middle of January.

This year was busy than normal as I also had my City and Guild's coursework to give in and it was a last minute rush because I had spent all my time preparing for Ruby's Under the Sea Afternoon Tea!

Ruby is a mermaid with legs, she loves swimming and The Octonauts so an Under the Sea theme party was inevitable. This is her 5th birthday party!

The Birthday Mermaid

Ruby wore her mermaid dress that I made for her 4th birthday present. She's had a lot of wear out of it, especially here!

My friend Lou saved the day by lending me her cardboard fish from her under the sea party and I mixed them up with blue netting that was draped across cotton that had been zigzagged across the ceiling. Blue pearlised balloons weighted down with a button inside hung from the cotton.

I bought some blue sequin fabric from Fabricland and hung it up over the living room door so that the guests could "enter the sea".

We also hung fairy lights from the ceiling, paper garlands across the room and displays of shells on fabric covered surfaces.

When the party guests arrived they made jelly fish, using paper bowls, strips of the tissue paper and tape. We hung them from the ceiling to add to the decorations. 

With some guests dressed as mermaids and divers they played pass the parcel with pretty shells in each layer, find the magic scale on the fish and throw a bean bag at the octopus.

To make the octopus and the fish game (not shown) I saved Ikea packaging and drew the octopus on, cut a hole for the mouth and provided bean bags to throw through the mouth.

I think my favourite game of the party was the one where each child had to lie on the floor with a sweet on their head. We told them jokes and tickled their toes until there was only one child left. I great way for a little bit of peace at a party.

Fish Food!
The kids ate jam and cream cheese dolphin shaped sandwiches, melon from the melon fish, chocolate shells and macaroon oysters (made by Auntie Anna).

The cake was a vanila ombre ruffle cake with waves, a sandy beach and a toy mermaid on top. I can't find a photo of it but the inside was six layers of blue sponge.

I couldn't resist a photo of Jacob posing as the octopus, he was fantastic on the day and "manned" the octopus game, taking a number of bean bags to the stomach, and the fishing game. Maybe next year he can run the party all by himself!

March of the Mermaids

Yesterday we dressed up as mermaids and a crab and were accompanied by the sailor who found us for Brighton's first March of the Mermaids. We emerged from the first batch of rain to walk and dance along the seafront to the party at Above Audio with lots of other sea creatures.

We had so much fun. This is what our day looked like!

Mr Krabs

Ay Ay Captain!

I made costumes for Jacob, Ruby and myself whilst Chris added a pipe and hat to the beard he has been growing all year.

3 Mermaids

We walked from the Peace Statue, past Brighton Fishing Museum....

...to Above Audio where there were real Merlesque mermaids! Ruby loved the Mermaids and visited them lots. Jacob enjoyed his chat with them too.

There was kids craft, face painting by Julia Arts, Qukulele ukulele players and Stay Sick providing entertainment and music. There were also prizes!!! Ruby Won a family ticket to the Sealife Centre for the being the Tiny-est Mermaid and Jacob won a Turtle for being the Coolest Crab. They are both so proud of their rosettes and goody bags.

We can't wait for next year!

World Book Day - Dressing Up

Jacob's school dressed up today for World Book Day. 

Can you guess who he is?

Gandalf from The Hobbit!

Wearing a travelling cape made by me earlier this year and a wadding beard that I wasn't sure would last the day but it did!

Apparently the expression on his face is his Gandalf face?!

Did you or your kids do anything special for World Book Day? 

Tutorial - Parrot Wings

It was back to school yesterday after the half term holiday. I vaguely remember reading a newsletter before we headed off to Disneyland about Jacob needing to dress up as an animal during the first week back. I read the letter properly on Sunday and realised that a costume was needed not just a set of clothes in an animal colour. It had to be an animal from the African plains, the rainforest or the desert. 

I thought that the tiger tail and mask that I'd made for him when he was three would do but oh no, Jacob had decided that he wanted to be a parrot! I know I could have said "no, you will be a tiger" but he might not wear fancy dress I make him for much longer (when do boys grow out of that?) so I said "ok, I will make you some parrot wings" (Daddy's birthday present which is already a day late can wait one more day, sorry Chris).

I did a quick google image search and found this parrot...

...and a quick sketch and a measure of Jacob later and I had my plan. 

Here is how I made Jacob's Red and Green Macaw Wings!

I used:

Paper

Pencil

Tape measure

Fabric in your parrot colours, I used Honeycomb Parc from Fabricland

125cm of bias binding in one of your parrot colours

Cotton

Scissors

Pins

Sewing machine or needle if you are hand stitching

Safety pin

Felt scraps

Two buttons

I wanted the wings to look like the parrot was in flight. So I got Jacob to stand with his arms out at the side and measured from wrist to wrist across his back, which was 91cm.

I made my pattern pieces using a large roll of paper (you could use a roll of brown paper or cheap gift wrap). I drew one half of the wings and placed the paper on the fold of the fabric to get a symmetrical pair of wings.

In total I had; one large blue piece, one green feather piece, one red feather piece, a blue piece for extra feathers at the bottom, four light blue single feathers, one large light blue feather piece and three single red feathers (not in the photo below).

I bought some honeycomb parc which comes in lots of bright colours, is really cheap and doesn't fray. I also like the way the honeycomb pattern in it gives a textured effect for the feathers.

I then cut out the paper pattern pieces using normal scissors. I folded the fabric and placed the centre edge of the pattern on the fold, pinned it to the fabric and cut them out using fabric scissors. 

Handy Hint

Don't use fabric scissors on anything other than fabric. I ruined my Mums pinking shears cutting paper with them when I was little!

Next I assembled the wings, layering each set of feathers and pinned them into place. 

After a quick tea break I set my sewing machine to zig zag and stitched all of the pieces together, leaving the dark blue feathers unstitched at the bottom to create movement.

To finish them off I took the bias binding and folded it over the top edge of the wings (leaving approx. 15cm at each end for Jacob to hold on to) and stitched it into place. I then tied the 15cm bits into loops to go over his thumb.

The wings looked great but the outfit was "missing" something. So, I made a parrot head bandana using a rectangle of the red parc, some felt for a beak and a couple of buttons.

First I made sure that the rectangle of red parc would fit round my head (as my model was at school). Using pieces of grey and cream felt I cut out two slightly curved triangles, one slightly bigger than the other and basted them together, I marked the centre of the bottom edge of the rectangle and stitched the felt into place. I cut out a couple of almond shapes for the eyes and stitched them on with a button in the centre of each.

One little Red and Green Macaw ready for school. Squawk!