Art Birthday Party (on a budget!)

I mentioned in an early post that my husband and I were doing the Dave Ramsey finance program, so this year we wanted to keep the birthday parties simple and on budget (I've struggled with that in the past).

My daughter wanted to paint for her birthday so I decided to throw a little art party for her and her friends. And even though I didn't spend lots of money or honestly even tons of time on it, they still had SO MUCH fun! Here are the invitations I made:

Super simple, made from construction paper you can get from Wal-Mart or Target. Since invitations get tossed as soon as the event is over, there's no reason to go too crazy on it.

The set up was pretty simple as well. The thing that took the longest was the rainbow chain link I made. I just used scrapbook paper I already had. Then I covered my table in the paper that comes in our art easel in case of paint accidents or in case the girls wanted to draw on the table.

The little chalkboard easels I got a long time ago and I've been waiting to use them! So glad I did! And those itsy bitsy easels and canvases I got from Wal-Mart for $0.97 each. They are so cute and little!

We did 3 activites with one game thrown in there. 

Our first activity was painting those little canvases. They were the perfect size for those little hands. The only problem I had was the paint pots. I bought them at the dollar store and they were mostly dry when we opened them! Not cool, Dollar Tree. We made it work.

Second activity was stringing Fruit Loops onto a piece of yarn to make necklaces. They really liked doing this but only 2 of them (out of 4) wanted to actually wear the necklace afterward. They really enjoyed eating the cereal as they went :)

The third and by far favorite activity was cookie decorating. I made sugar cookies into squares to look more like an art canvas and made rainbow frostings. I also provided them with marshmallows, sprinkles, and pink Sixlets to decorate their little cookie art works. They loved this so much!

The game we played was Pin the Color on the Art Palatte. They weren't very excited about this game. Well, my daughter liked it but the other girls did it once and were over it. But my daughter did it several times and thought it was lots of fun!

Lastly, I made a cookie cake that I tried to make look like an art palatte. It turned out pretty cute and my kids like cookie cakes a lot better than traditional cake. I just used the Pillsbury Funfetti mix to make the cookie cake.

And that's it! I probably spent about $30 total for this party but honestly I had most of the stuff I used and I bet you have all the stuff, too! Let me know if you do an art party, I'd love to check it out!