crowns, wands and fairy dust

With just a few 3-4 day reprieves, I’ve been sick since January 2nd. Flu, colds, strep, secondary lung impairment… you name it. Mary huddles on the couch today, her seventh day in a row missing school– a family record. The moral of the story (for me at least) don’t go running in the inversion or when you have a fever.  Happily I’ve been dealing with my illnesses better than I usually would– though I’ve noticed myself speaking a bit sharper than normal (sorry about that)– and gleefully, my long days at home and turning down lots of work mean I’m pretty much caught up on everything photography related (knock on wood). My fellow photogs know how glorious that feels. Thus, I’m backing up to blog Mary’s birthday party, lots of fun photo sessions and maybe even our London trip.

I’ve had several requests for a tutorial on the crowns we created for Mary’s birthday party. Well, I’ll give you that, and the rest of the party too.

Sadly, my years of little girl parties may be coming an end; we needed to invite the fairies while the little girls still have stardust in their eyes.

We considered a winter fairy party, but garden fairies are just so fabulous we decided to create colorful inside blooms.

My mother’s vases and dishes always lend elegance to the table.

Borrowing and begging, we found various fairies for our display.

The mushroom cake might look tricky, but I made it in under an hour. I used the cupcake cake pan which has loyally served us for many years and simply turned the bottom section upside down to create a mushroom shape. The pre-made fondant is from Michael’s craft store. Easy peasy.

I printed off vintage fairy images from the internet and enhanced them with a bit of glitter. See the tiny bottles of fairy dust in the background? Sprinkle the dust on flowers and fairies will appear!

For party favors we found these inexpensive fairy charms from ebay
hung them on simple ball chains and added a bit a sparkle.

Ah, the crowns. Another simple as can be craft (but it took us a few tries to get it right, so this is worth reading)

The metallic lace comes (yet again) from ebay. White or ivory lace works too, but we were in a gold/silver mood.

Cut the lace in approximately 18″ lengths (this is all approximate) and submerge them in a mixture 2 parts Stiffy one part water. They’ll be too wet to form immediately, so hang to dry for several hours (this will depend on your climate, Utah is very dry).

When damp, take the lace down and form into crowns. If the lace is completely sitff, just use a spray bottle to make it pliable.

We used bowls and pots, but found this vase to be the best way to form crowns. The crown only needs to sit on the vase for a minute before you can set it aside and form another one.

Mary arranged them in my mom’s blue cabinet–one of those lovely things I inherited from my mom and I’ve never known what to put on the shelves. Although you might think the girls would fight over the big ornate crowns, many chose the smaller, more subtle tiaras.

After choosing their crowns, the girls decorated them with crystals. I didn’t get a single photo of all the action, but you can spy a few adorned crowns.
 

For me, it’s not a party unless we serve tea and treat on fancy dishes– I think every one of Mary’s birthday’s has included some sort of tea party.

We start with berries and whip cream,

While the boys serve fairy tea (pink lemonade) and the girls pile plates with pastries and sandwiches.

There’s a whole lot of silliness going on.

After a fairy treasure hunt, games and stories we made fairy wands. Since I was sitting on the floor (in my pink Glinda costume) creating wands I didn’t get a photo of the girls dancing and twirling– so you’ll just have to take my word for it– simple and magical.

Simply take crepe paper and a dowel. And of course tape. What would life be without packing tape?

Make sure your tape covers all four colors or you’ll lose strand.

Fold over,

and lift. Cut to desired length. I like them long (since I like to overdo things) but little girls will trip if they are more than 4 feet or so.

Oh, it was a wonderful day. Worth every bit of effort (though I wish I’d started earlier instead of pulling nearly everything together the day before– take note for next year). And can you stand just a few more photos as it came to life that night?

Our parties always include a lot of my mom– her storytelling, her delight in creating magic (in overdoing), her love of beauty and of course all the dishes and cake tiers and lovely things she left behind. We always keep her picture close and I know she watches from above, savoring every moment and sprinkling a bit of heavenly dust over the scene.