Rainbow Art Party Recap

I've been meaning to write a post on this for a few months now but other things ended up taking precedence and I just never got around to it until now. My oldest bear is a crafting, painting, drawing fiend and she decided pretty much right after her fourth birthday that she wanted a rainbow art party for her fifth birthday. This post is a photo recap of her party with some rainbow themed food and craft ideas that were easy to put together and a big hit at the party. 

This year I actually followed my own advice for party planning (which you can read about here) and stuck to a small budget, made a few select food treats with big impact, and had a craft and a couple games to entertain the kids). Here's a run down of some simple things you can do to create a rainbow art party. 

First I started with the invite. My theme was already decided and with that my colour scheme was pretty easy to figure out! Ha. My little bear had very strong ideas on what she wanted her invite to look like and after a bit of back and forth with ideas, we came up with this. To make the cloud, I used Microsoft Word and used a speech bubble shape from the shape directory and simply added my text to the bubble, then printed and cut each one out. Next I bought some rainbow coloured satin ribbons from a discount store and clued them to the back. Once that was dry, I glued another cloud shape to the back that had no text on it. To finish the invite off I glued white glitter around the perimeter of the cloud. Done! 

Excuse the poor photo lighting :)

For the party itself, I bought enough 20x20cm art canvas, art palettes and paint for each kid. When the party started each kid got to paint their own rainbow or whatever took their artistic fancy. 

While the paintings were drying, they had morning tea. I kept it very simple food wise this year, but I made sure to stick to the rainbow theme to tie everything together.

Jelly Rainbow Cups (for how to make and assemble click here) 

Rice Crispy Paint Brushes (for the basic rice crispy recipe click here)

Rainbow Sprinkle Cookies (for the basic cookie recipe click here. Once the dough is made, roll each cookie dough ball in rainbow sprinkles before baking)

After morning tea it was time for games like musical statues and musical bumps, a play in the playground the then it was time for the pièce de résistance...

But the best bit was when we cut into it...

The kids were really wowed by the rainbow inside. I haven't written up the recipe for the cake but it's a basic white cake with gel food colouring for each layer. I made marshmallow icing for this cake, but basic buttercream icing would work well too. The best recipe to use when making this cake is a dense white cake recipe. I also used extra wide straws in the centre of the cake as doweling to keep the layers stable. 

For party bags each kid was given a giant chocolate covered rainbow marshmallow (similar to here), a sparkle sketch pad, set of colour pencils, rainbow stickers and rainbow twizzlers (which I trekked back with me from the US). It all came in a white paper bag with a rainbow cloud like the invitation on it with each child's name on the cloud (I forgot to take a photo of the party bags). 

The party was one of the easiest I've done, most affordable, least stressful and most importantly, all the kids had a great time. I've learned that focusing on a few high impact elements when throwing a party is the key. 

Happy Party Planning!