A Little Birthday...An Alice in Wonderland Party

I copied the invitation idea from an Alice in Wonderland comic-con party Disney held. It was easy to find a free Alice in Wonderland font online too. The skeleton keys were a little tricky to find at first. I kept thinking I needed antique ones, but they were really expensive and ranged in price a lot from place to place. Then I tried my luck at Lowes and to my surprise they had the perfect little key. The secret is to go ask the "key making man". They were not out in packages, he just had a little box of them behind his desk. They were about $3.00 each.

Since my prop budget for this party was a little smaller than Tim Burton's I used lots of things I already had and made lots of things out of paper. I stuck cards in my topiary and all around the table. The Butterflies are a Martha Stewart clip-art project that you can get for free online. I changed the colors of the butterflies myself by adjusting the hues in Photoshop so that it would match the colors of my party better. Then I just printed them on card stock, cut them out, and glued them together. Simple rolled scotch tape held them to the walls.


I used some of my antique medical bottles to recreate the shrinking potion Alice drinks. I did one big jar and one small jar to represent the shrinking. I got the colored liquid with just water and food coloring.

I made sure to have random stacks of tea-cups on the table to add to the madness.

Each place setting for the adults also had a teas-cup and saucer and a little stripped straw with a drink me tag on it. I just used regular paper and a stamp set I have to make the tags.

One of my favorite things on the table was these simple and easy to make crepe paper banners with the words I'm Late trailing on them. I took regular crepe paper and folded it in half and then fringed it with my scissors to get these frilly banners. Then I printed the words I'm Late out on my computer and edged the letters with glue and glitter. Then after I laid the crepe paper out on the table I hot glued the letters on.

I also had little round cutouts with Alice in Wonderland sketches on them all over the table. Again something I just did on the computer. For desserts I made blue french macaroons with homemade blackberry jam filling and mushroom cookies. Both were perfect for the look and feel of the party.




Then for an activity us ladies made charm necklaces using the keys I had sent out. We made an Alice shrinky dink charm (get it? shrinking Alice) and a shrinky dink initial charm that looked like a type writer key. The other charms were just discount bags of bird charms that I found at the craft store. While we did that I had the little girls color wooden letters of their first initial. So at the end of the party everyone had their own little craft they had made.

The Bird and the Berry.com -- Jill Hutchings