After a six month absence, I make my return to blogging with this oldie but goodie just in time for Throwback Thursday. Like most four year old girls, my J is princess-obsessed. For her 4th birthday, she requested a Rapunzel theme, and we had a lot of fun with it. If you have not seen the movie Tangled, you will now be enlightened…
First up was the invitations. As always, I found a lot of inspiration via the lovely ladies of Pinterest. Please check out my inspiration board here. I knew I wanted to make a Rapunzel tower invite with hair hanging down from the tower. I searched for a template to make my job easier, but could not find one to suite my needs. So I drew one and scanned it to my mobile phone with CamScanner. I uploaded it to Scribd so you can feel free to borrow it.
Next, I created my invitation text in Google Docs, cut and pasted it onto the template and scanned it again with CamScanner. I would have just photocopied it, but I was printing on heavy card stock, and it kept jamming the printer 🙂 I used yellow embroidery floss to make Rapunzel’s hair and cut out glittery purple triangles for the tower roof. Here is my final product. This went A LOT quicker than last year’s Dora Backpacks.
Next, I moved onto party favors. There would be a mix of boys and girls in attendance: Princesses vs. Ruffians if you will. For the princesses, I made Rapunzel hair by braiding yellow yarn, attaching it to elastic headbands and adorning the headbands with flowers. The idea was to create an activity to allow the girls to decorate the hair with flowers like Rapunzel wears in the movie. The best tutorial I found for making the hair is found here, and this is the method I used. I placed the chairs at least 5 ft apart for a long braid to go on my front door, and moved them closer in to make hair for the girls (they are little after all). I had a bunch of braids to make, so it was quite a bit more time consuming than I had originally anticipated.
Once, I had all my braids completed, each had an end with a loop and a cut end representing the tail of the braid. I bought colorful elastic headbands at the dollar store and simply centered the headband below the loop, threaded the tail through the loop and this secured the braid to the headband. I then glued on felt flowers to the part of the headband that would be visible at the crown of each girl’s head. Here is my daughter showing off hers.
For my Ruffians, I made Viking hats. In Tangled, Flynn takes Rapunzel to a bar called The Ugly Duckling. Its occupants most closely resemble vikings. I made my Viking hats out of cereal boxes and card stock using the tutorial here. I wish I had saved my template for you as it took a few tries to get it right. The most time consuming part was wrapping the cardboard with duck tape. If I had silver spray paint on hand, I might have gone that route instead. Hind sight is always 20/20.
I was pretty exhausted after all this crafting, but had a few party decorations to get to. For table dressings, I used dollar store plastic table cloths in purple and yellow. J’s party falls after her birthday, and her Grammy gave her a birthday card with a very large Rapunzel poster that we hung up.
I snagged this awesome free printable Tangled pendant at Paging SuperMom, but my laser printer was running low on ink, so I hit a roadblock. Not to be totally derailed, I cut my pendants out of purple card stock and printed a sheet of tangled suns on yellow card stock (sadly the link was taken down so I cannot share this free printable with you). After a little cutting and pasting, I was back in business. I had dollar store paper lanterns left over from J’s Ariel Pool Party (where they served as jellyfish), so I repurposed them as they were originally intended. Go figure.
Lanterns are a big part of the movie Tangled. Rapunzel’s entire journey from Mother Gothel’s tower is incited by her refusal to let Rapunzel go see the lights that twinkle in the sky each year on her birthday. I came across a lot of tutorials on DIY lanterns. In the end, I went the easy route. I purchased color changing LED lights from the dollar store and pasted Tangled Suns on them. I also have this cool candle light fixture above my dining room table. It got some Tangled suns also.
Finally, we have a transom above our front door, and I wanted to make it appear that Rapuzel was throwing her hair down from that window. I made an extra long and thick braid to hang above the door and also created a royal purple pendant with the number 4 on it celebrating J’s 4th birthday.
I was prepped and ready for this party nearly a week ahead of time, and I owe that all to the fact that J is older now and very helpful when it comes to decorating and crafting. I am sad to see her grow up so quickly but also so proud at how far she’s come in this world. Until next time- J’s Tangled Birthday Party Part II: Party Time- where I’ll share all the details of her very special day.
While Everyone Else Is Sleeping 