Richard Scarry DIY Birthday party - Busytown Decorations, Favors

Now that we have our invites, It's onto Inside Decorations and Favors..

I love Decorations, But this time since the basis of the party will hopefully be outside running around in cardboard busy town cars, I would try and limit decorations to only around the table types. So I started with a banner.

I used an old "Things that Go" book that was ripped up, and cut out pennant triangles. I needed one for Every letter of Happy Birthday and his name. 

I found the letters in one of the Richard Scarry books that lists the alphabet. I enlarged them and printed them out 2"H. I cut them out with a die cutter and double stick taped them to the pennants. 

I then used some binding strip that I had laying around and sewed the pennants together to form a banner. Whalla!

The rest of my inside decorations would be online store bought Richard Scarry brand paper plates, napkins, hats and paper mats. The reusable cups, hats and mats could be taken by the attending children.

For the center of the tables, I wanted to use authentic vintage Richard Scarry toys. 

I found some of the figures on Ebay.com and found a great book, Richard Scarry's Best Make-It book (LINK)

I highly recommend it, there are TONS of cut out paper people, vehicles and toys.

In the Make It book, is a great pattern to make a Lowly Worm plush. There he is twirled around a party hat. I made him and added wire inside so we could make him bend. 

Besides, that, I just blew up some balloons, hung streamers and collected all our Richard Scarry books and made a nice table of them so kids or adults could look at.

Favors

For the party favors, I wanted them to be Richard Scarry related. I always love to give books, so I found a great lot of new books on Ebay.com. I knew about 8 kids were coming, so I got 10, just to be safe.I didn't want the subject matter to be too boyish, so I chose Shapes and opposites.

I then looked for some small figures, and found bananas Gorilla riding in his banana car in a huge lot at a great price.  The notepads I found at the online party store with the former decorations. I added a twist crayon for the older children.

The Thank you tagged I created by finding a vehicle I liked and cut and pasted text from a book till I had "Thank You for coming".

I found some Chinese take out style containers in blue, so I filled them up with goodies and also included a snack, older kids got gummies, younger received the crackers.

I wrapped the books and attached tags for everyone, and Whalla!

Next, Let's play Cars Busy Town Style!

Richard Scarry DIY Birthday Party - Invites

Richard Scarry, Who doesn't remember and love Richard Scarry!? 

My son loved and loves Richard Scarry books, any and all, so many amazing illustrations of a whole world! It was the perfect theme for his 3rd Birthday Party. He especially loved The Things that Go books he wrote. It seemed like a no brainer..we would go with that loosely and have to have cardboard cars to ride in!

But to start, Invites..

To start, I just started out finding images I liked, luckily for me I picked up some battered used ones at a thrift store, and could use them for images on decorations as well later.

I chose some vehicles and I liked the way he had a plane with a banner so I could use that to write his age. I would layout the vehicles to look like everyone was coming to the party.

I found in one of the books an alphabet, so I cut and pasted the letters I needed to make his name, the date and the word "celebrate".  

The images are all from various books and I added some words that I wanted as well. The party one is a great one, and even an image of Hilda Hippo carrying a cake. priceless!

I found the clock on a page and cut and pasted the hands to point to the party time.

I liked the idea of the invite folded like an accordion, so I printed them on longer paper, 16" wide. That way, the image could continue the whole invite. 

Overall, I think it looked colorful and fun!

Next Up, Decorations and Favors..