FREE printable: Disney World postcard party invitation

Remember Elise's birthday party invitations? I've gotten a couple of requests for the design I used on the back of the postcard, so I thought I'd offer it up as a free printable. Pair with a 4"x6" photo print on the front for quick handmade invitations.

I made up two versions of this 4"x6" invitation. If you are handy with design programs, download the JPG file. But if you're not, I also designed an interactive PDF form. Just type in your info and print on a 4"x6" card! Easy!

To save the file to your computer: click on the link below, and select File > Download.

Disney World postcard party invitation (JPG)

Disney World postcard party invitation (interactive PDF form)



This printable is for personal, non-commercial use only. Feel free to link to this blog post, but redistributing or selling the file or a printed version is not OK.

p.s. If you're looking for a Disney-ish font to use... The Walt Disney World retro logo font is called Florida Project and is free for non-commercial use. There are also so many Disney fonts at The Disney Experience.

FREE printable: Mickey Mouse birthday party favor tags

Having a Mickey Mouse birthday party? I thought I'd share the printable for the party favor tag I created for my Mickey cake pops.

I printed them on an 8.5"x11" sheet of card stock and used a two-inch circular paper punch, but if you don't have a punch, they'd also work cut into squares.

These tags are free for personal, non-commercial use only. Feel free to link to this blog post, but redistributing or selling these tags is not OK.

Download: Mickey Mouse Party Favor Tags

p.s. The Walt Disney handwriting font I used is called Waltograph and is free for personal use. (It also includes the Mickey ears icon as a special character!)

Birthday party activity: Kid's fishing game

After being inspired by one of my daughter's magnetic puzzles, I put together this fishing game for her party. The concept is simple, and the kids caught on immediately. Catch the stars, put them in the basket.

I love this idea as a party activity because it's so flexible; you can customize it to any theme with different shapes. So many possibilities!

I went with stars to tie back to the Magic Kingdom (not a literal interpretation, but good enough for me). I found these wood star shapes at Jo-Ann, and there were several other kinds of wood stars, foam stars, paper cutouts. There were a ton of options at just that one store. (I will note that the package states these are not toys. Use your own judgement whether they are safe enough for your kids to play with.)

First, I lightly sanded the stars to smooth out the edges. It only took about 15 minutes, and it's worth for a better end product.

Then Elise and I attached some magnets to the shapes. These were the self-adhesive kind, but you could also use glue if needed. We put magnets on both sides so we wouldn't have to flip them the "right" way while playing.

I sprayed both sides of the stars with primer, mainly because I knew the black magnets would be hard to cover up with paint alone.

Then I painted them with regular craft paints. Spray paint would have been quicker, but I didn't want to buy multiple colors of spray paint for such a small project.

And because I can't leave good enough alone, I gave all the stars a topcoat of Martha Stewart glitter paint. It's less of a paint and more of a glaze, in my opinion. Transparent and light on the glitter. It's hard to see in the photos. It's subtle.

Stars are done! Onto the fishing poles!

I totally MacGyvered the two fishing poles. The actual pole part was made from leftover wood pieces from this chair. The long piece is a "stretcher" (the rod that holds two of the chair legs together, and yes, I had to look up that term). I capped the top of the pole with a mushroom-shaped hole plug from the same chair.

And now I'm sure you're saying, "hey crazy lady, I'm not a hoarder. I don't have random chair parts hanging around." True, but use your imagination. Many household objects would be a decent substitute. A ruler, a wooden spoon, a drumstick, a length of a dowel or even a stick from the backyard.

I added a ribbon scrap and tied one of those metal buttons you can cover with fabric on the end. Then I glued a super strong "neo" magnet to the button. I got mine from Michael's and they are so much stronger than regular ceramic magnets.

I put all the stars in a saucer sled to keep them from migrating while the kids were trying to catch them. I have to say, this worked pretty well, and we were able to get some use from the sled after a snow-less winter.

Like I mentioned in the party activities post, I designed this to be less of a "game" and more something just to keep the kids busy. However, it would be easy to take the concept and turn it into a true game with a timer or point values assigned to the shapes. 25 points for the gold star! Prizes for all!

How to make Mickey Mouse ears birthday party hats

As I mentioned previously, my daughter requested party hats for her birthday party. She's got a very specific prescription about what belongs at a birthday party: cake, ice cream, party hats. Lucky for me, that gave me a reason to make these cute Mickey ear hats.

These are really easy to make (I promise!), but there are a lot of steps. I put everything together assembly line style, but I estimate it took about seven minutes for each hat. You can make a whole party's worth of hats in under an hour! 

And if you're not a Disney nerd, you don't have to add the Mickey ears! You can follow just the first part of this tutorial to make pretty party hats. Let's go!

It all starts with a pack of paper party hats from the dollar store. Sure, you could probably make your own from card stock, but this saves a bunch of time.

First, unfold one of the party hats and trace it onto some cardboard to create a template. I used cardboard from a cereal box. This step might seem unnecessary; why not just trace the unfolded hat? Well, the unfolded hat is going to curl up on you over and over again. The template will lay flat and make your life easier.

(Remember to re-fold the hat you unfolded. We're going to cover the hats just as they came out of the package.)

Trace the template onto the back of pretty scrapbook paper, or even wrapping paper. Just to be safe, you want your paper to be a bit larger than the hat, so cut the paper leaving yourself about a 1/2 inch margin outside of the traced line. 

Put a piece of scotch tape over where the chin strap pokes through on the outside of the hat to secure it. This might be overkill, but once the paper is on the hat, you won't be able to fix a strap that has slipped out.

Now it's time to glue the paper to the hat. I used hot glue because it dries instantaneously. Line up the paper on the hat, then hot glue one edge along the seam of the hat and around the base of the cone. Run a final stripe of glue along the last edge and press it over the seam of the hat. There should be a bit of overlap.

You will probably have some excess paper hanging off the bottom edge. Use a scissors to trim this away.

Your party hat is done! Stop here, or keep going to make it a Mickey ears party hat.

I found this stiffened felt at Michaels for 99 cents a sheet. It's... well, stiff. It doesn't flop over like regular felt would. You could also probably use black foam core or poster board instead if you wanted to.

Find something to trace circles onto the felt. I traced the inside of a roll of painters tape, which is about three inches in diameter. (I used a white pencil so it would show up on the photos, but a regular pencil should work OK too.) You can see in the photo above how I used the straight edge of the felt to lop off the bottom part of the circle. This flat edge is where the "ear" is going to attach to the hat.

I was able to get eight ears of this size from each 9"x12" sheet of felt. Cut them out with a sharp fabric scissors.

Making sure to note the orientation of the chin strap, draw a small pencil line on one side of the hat where you'll attach the first ear. 

Use a tiny bit of hot glue to attach the first ear along the pencil line. Glue the second ear on the opposite side of the hat. (It's easier to eyeball where to put the second ear than to eyeball where to draw a second line.)

Hooray! You're done! Feel free to dance around.

p.s. Who IS this girl? Where'd my baby go?!

Disney World Magic Kingdom birthday party: Favors, Part 2

The kids weren't the only ones to get in on the party favors. I saw this tutorial about how to make Mickey Mouse cake pops a few months ago and knew they would be a perfect treat to send everyone home with.

Sort of reminiscent of those Mickey ice cream bars, no?

I made some alterations to the directions linked above. I've been using a cake pop maker (sort of like a waffle maker), and it's pretty easy to work with. I haven't made cake balls in the "rolling crumbled cake" way, so I'm not sure how hard that is. Another variations from the instructions: I used dark chocolate instead of tinting the chocolate black.

They were a little harder to make than normal round cake pops; I had to rethink my chocolate dipping techniques, but in the end, they turned out great.

Download the FREE printable favor tag!

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See more Magic Kingdom party details!

Invitations	Decorations

Activities	Favors, Part 1

Disney World Magic Kingdom birthday party: Favors, Part 1

I love party favors. I know some people think they don't matter, but I love being able to send everyone home with a little something.

Kid's favors have a reputation of being junk, so I wanted to create something non-disposable. And when I ran across this coin purse tutorial, I knew it was what I wanted to do.

I'm telling you these are not hard to make. I know some of you won't believe me, and you'll be freaked out by the zipper. It's a lot of steps and a little bit of thinking inside-out, but they are easy. I think each one probably took about 20-30 minutes.

I thought this nesting doll fabric from Jo-Ann was vaguely "it's a small world"-ish, yes? No? Either way, it's super cute. But it required some extra thought to figure out how to cut the print. No headless nesting dolls, please.

I fudged the dimensions a little from the tutorial linked above and used two pieces of fabric at 6.5"x9" each.

For the boys, I was initially going to use a train fabric to represent the Disney World Railroad, but everything I located was either too ugly, too themed (Thomas/Dinosaur Train/Chuggington -- man, there are a lot of train shows), or more than I wanted to spend ($16/yd.). Don't tell those train-loving little boys!

I finally ran across this Mickey Mouse fabric at Hobby Lobby. I was sort of surprised it was so simple and understated given that most licensed character fabrics are so gaudy.

I used all stash/scrap fabrics for the linings and the straps, and the fabric for the outside layer cost something like 60 cents per pouch. (And the Mickey fabric was more like 40 cents per pouch!) It's such a very small amount of fabric that is required.

I bought the zippers from zipit on etsy and would definitely order from them again. I think they cost something like 60 cents each shipped! And they come in a zillion colors.

But what would a goody bag be without some requisite junk trinkets? I was proud to stay relatively on-theme without getting too caught up in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse machine.

The ice cream cone shaped bubbles were 3 for $1 from Dollar Tree. The glow bracelets were 15 for $1 from Michael's. The star glitter bouncy balls were 25 cents each from Party City. (They are also available at Target for the same price, 8 for $2.) And the Mickey Mouse stickers were 8 sheets for 99 cents at Party City.

For the favor bags, I wanted to use some plain brown paper lunch bags I had instead of buying new ones. I thought I would dress them up by printing directly on the bags.

I wish I could say that this was a great idea, but in actuality, it was pretty frustrating. Thank goodness I only wanted to print six bags; more and I would have completely abandoned the idea altogether.

After experimenting on my own, I finally decided to look for help and found this tutorial explaining how to tape down the edges. That helped, but I still had some problems. For every one bag that printed (more or less) correctly, two misprinted or got jammed up in the printer.

And the "good" ones still have some smears on them. I think it sort of added to the look. (At least that's what I'm telling myself. My non-designy husband agreed.)

I have an HP printer that sucks the paper in from the front and flips it around inside the printer (those with HPs know what I'm talking about), and that probably didn't help. Maybe if you have a printer that feeds paper in straight through, you might have a better success rate.

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09/02/2013: By request, I've made the "souvenir" favor bag into a free printable template. The name field can be personalized or deleted and left blank. Customize a few for your Disney party guests! Template is designed to print on plain lunchbags (5 1/8" x 10 5/8" size).

Download Walt Disney World Souvenirs Party Favor Bag Template >>

Click on the link above, then save the file to your computer by selecting File > Download.
(You won't be able to customize the form within your web browser.)

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See more Magic Kingdom party details!

Invitations	Decorations

Activities	Favors, Part 2