Beatles Birthday Party – A Guest Post

Christy Guest Posts, Ink & Paper 13 Comments

Today, I’m hosting a guest post from my friend, Michelle, who has the coolest 3 year old you will ever meet. She threw him a Beatles themed birthday party that is SO pinterest-worthy. You will die when you see all her cute decorations, and how much detail she put into everything. 

 

Hi! I’m Michelle, and I have quite possibly the coolest kid on the face of the planet. He pretty much came out of the womb obsessed with music, and somewhere around his second birthday he developed an interest in the Beatles that has since blossomed into a full-blown obsession. Seriously, this kid eats, sleeps, and breathes John, George, Paul and Ringo. He can name most songs within a few notes and tell you what album it’s on and which of the four is the lead singer for that particular song.

So, when it came time to plan his third birthday party, the Beatles seemed an obvious choice for a theme until I realized there isn’t a lot of stuff readily available for a kids Beatles party. It was time to start making my own.

The obvious first step was the invitation. As “Come Together” is his favorite song, and Abbey Road is his favorite album (yes, my three year old has a favorite Beatles album) I figured I’d start there. I found photos of the front and back of the album cover and created my own illustrator template to create the sleeve. Then, I designed the center of the record to be the actual invitation and spent a lovely evening assembling. Bonus, knowing you have to hand make the invitations makes you stop and consider just how many people you actually want to invite.

Beatles Birthday Party Invitations | www.inklingsandyarns.com

From there, I started thinking about decorations. I cut several lyrics from Beatles songs out of colored paper (in hindsight, card stock probably would have been better since the humidity in Mississippi wilted my Ss rather quickly).

Beatles Birthday Party Song Lyric Banners | www.inklingsandyarns.com

I also cut strawberries out of card stock for our very own “Strawberry Fields Forever”…

Beatles Birthday Party Apples and Strawberry Fields | www.inklingsandyarns.com

and apples to hang in the trees to go with my favorite piece of all:

Beatles Birthday Party Yellow Submarine | www.inklingsandyarns.com

the five-foot-long yellow submarine made out of foam board. I can’t believe how well it turned out, and he was sooo excited to see it the morning of his party.

Beatles Birthday Party Yellow Submarine Process | www.inklingsandyarns.com

I traced the entire submarine in illustrator to make a template and then used that template to cut out the submarine itself and all of the decorations, using my trusty number 11 exacto. Then, I outlined everything with a black paint pen.

Because by this point I had lost my mind, I also cut the Abbey Road silhouettes out of foam board.

Beatles Birthday Party Abbey Road Silhouettes | www.inklingsandyarns.com

The table decorations were fairly low key as I simply printed Beatles album covers out on photo paper and let them carry the load.

Beatles Birthday Party Table Decorations | www.inklingsandyarns.com

My final craft was the favor bags. They were really more of an afterthought, but wound up being almost everyone’s favorite. Again, I fired up my trusty Illustrator to create the images myself and then printed them out a tiny bit larger than the cheap paper bags I had picked up at the craft store. Then, I just glued them on and trimmed off the excess with an exacto and straight edge.

Beatles Birthday Party Treat Bags | www.inklingsandyarns.com

After the decorations were done, I turned to food. Most of the food was just your standard party fare, but I did make custom Beatles hair cookies. I found a photo online with silhouettes of the Beatles hair through the years and picked my favorite year to print. Then, once I had made and iced the cookies and let them dry overnight, I cut the hair silhouettes out of card stock and traced them on the cookies in edible marker. Hair has never looked so delicious.

Beatles Birthday Party Cookies | www.inklingsandyarns.com

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that this was my first attempt at decorating a cake with fondant. Let’s just say I won’t be quitting my day job any time soon to be opening a bakery, but the three year old was suitably impressed and kept opening the fridge the night before the party to check out his “Help cake”.

Beatles Birthday Party Cake | www.inklingsandyarns.com

Overall, it was a LOT of work, but the party was a huge success, and he was so excited to see all the Beatles stuff. In the end, that’s all that matters. Plus, the submarine and Abbey Road figures are going on his wall when we redecorate his new “big boy” room. Next year, I’m totally not going to go crazy. Nope….totally not.

Beatles Birthday Party | www.inklingsandyarns.com

Anyway, a big thanks to Christy for letting me show off my hard work, and I hope it’s helpful to anyone else that finds themselves trying to plan a Beatles themed party.

 

What did I tell you? Amazing, right? Let’s all go make this lady the Pinterest-celebrity she deserves to be! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sign up for Illustrator classes…