Monster Fun!!

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend! I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate with Caleb's family and friends. We made the trek out to Montana on Tuesday night (and only sat in traffic through the first 40 miles). After taking a tour of his hometown, and five more hours of driving (or sleeping, in my case), we made it to our destination. It was probably the most "scenic" trip I've taken through Montana. Luckily, the weather was absolutely gorgeous (50 degrees and sun!) and only hit a patch of snow in the mountains. And to make everything even better, his family is absolutely amazing! I was super nervous about meeting all of them (and feeling like an oddball) but they are the nicest people! (When he told me they were the meanest, I was a little worried. He was just giving me a hard time. Luckily there wasn't a test at the end of the trip! Too many people to remember!)
Anyway, after driving all day Saturday (or again, sleeping in the back of the car), we didn't do much Saturday night and I slowly started getting back into the swing of things on Sunday. Here are the two projects I was working on that I'm so excited to share! These items are for a Little Monster's first birthday. The two items match our "Monsters, Inc." party decorations.

The picture above shows a 30-piece set of centerpieces. There are 6 sets with 5 pieces in each set. Each set includes a "Happy Birthday",  a name/age pieces, and three characters. Each piece is double-sided and the words are pop-dotted. This was definitely a labor of love (and lots of fine!). Since it took me a little longer than I would have liked to finish, I decided to add a bag of confetti in as a "free gift". Here's what that looks like:

I was super excited about how this turned out! I'm glad my original plan worked out better than I expected (and that I took the easy way with the character pieces!!) This bag of confetti contains almost 400 tiny pieces! These two pieces would make the perfect addition to any party, especially with the favor bags from a few weeks ago!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

A New Chapter!

Good afternoon! I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! It has been an uber busy week around here. Between work (having to leave the apartment at 6:15, before the sun rises, is never fun. And on top of that, spending the week with rambunctious 7th graders...), crafting work (at least that's fun!) and party planning, I was definitely looking forward to last night, which was my first chance to relax a bit. And fall asleep at 10:00!
As you might have noticed, we have gone with a springy baby boy themed with the newest update to the blog and our other pages. We are right in the middle of baby season, and figured that there will be quite a few baby posts coming in the next month. To signal the start of baby season, we held the first of two showers for Sister last night. Fortunately, she has amazing coworkers who helped put it all together. Since it was her school shower, we decided to go with a storybook theme. Unfortunately, I didn't take very many pictures, but others did, so I'll post them when I can! I was put in charge of the decorations, or at least the paper ones, including the invitations. To set the mood, we went with baby Winnie the Pooh taking a bath in a tub, along with a Pooh quote. (I didn't get a picture of these. Yet. But there were a few comments on how cute they were!)
Two things I did take pictures of were the cupcake toppers and party favors. The menu matched storybooks, so we decided to make blue velvet cupcakes for dessert, which went with the book "The Velveteen Rabbit".

The toppers were kind of quickly thrown together, but feature both solid and polka dot paper, along with some circles punched from real story books. (The top one fittingly says 'Stork Laundry'!) And here are the party favors (I apologize for the poor picture):

The favors were chocolate chip cookies that go along with the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"! The bag toppers have the little mouse holding a pop-dotted chocolate chip cookie and reads: "If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll say thanks for coming to our shower!"
I also created a banner for the shower that read "Welcome Baby". Since I took the pictures with my phone, and the position of the banner, I had to take a few to get all of it.

The first and last spaces have story books on them, and the middle one features the very hungry caterpillar, all pop-dotted, of course!

And it wouldn't be a party without the new momma opening her gifts:

Soo many cute things! I don't know who was more excited- mom or auntie!!Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful weekend!

You're Invited to A Holiday Soiree!

Good morning! We hope everyone had a nice, relaxing weekend. Today’s post is going to be considerably shorter than yesterdays. After a little lull, we spent some time over few days working on some new projects for our shop, including these invitations:

We wanted to get a “head start” on the holidays. Funny story- we’ve had “Start Christmas so it’s done on time” on our to-do list since August (no lie) and we finally did so. (Maybe we’ll get our July birthday gift done now… ) We made invitations for a few themes, including the ever-popular “Ugly Sweater” party, a “Nutcracker Sweet” party, and a penguin-themed invitation.  Hopefully we’ll be able to add a few new invitations and matching items over the next few days. Or the next few weeks. The way we see it, you can’t have a party without invitations, so they're the best place to start!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a fantastic day!

Willkommen to An Oktoberfest Birthday!

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a superb weekend so far. We have been pretty busy over here, between school and crafting, and unfortunately we haven't had much time to post here. Now that we have some time this weekend (we're finally all caught up!), we wanted to share some pictures of party decor we made for a customer. These items were for two youngins' 2nd and 4th Oktoberfest birthday party.
A party isn't a party unless there are invitations. These are the ones that we made:

(The background isn't very nice. Sorry.) Since it was for a boy and a girl, we had to include a little German girl donned in her dirndl and the little boy in his lederhosen. We also thew a die-cut flag and little pretzel on top. The next few pictures are of the decorations we made. The first picture is of the centerpiece skewers that are going to be placed in some mums:

We included the little boy and girl again, and a "happy birthday" sentiment. When we were coming up with different shapes to include with the package, we went a little "design-happy" with this party and came up with these little gingerbread-inspired hearts. We made one for each child, with their name and age. Each piece is double-sided, so the centerpiece can be seen from either side. The next picture is of some of the cupcake toppers. This is where we really went happy with the designs:

These little guys range in size from 2.25"-3" or so. We included the little boy and girl and personalized hearts again. We also decided to do two with their ages. The last ones feature the German flag, a salted pretzel, and a little barrel. It's hard to see, but the barrel features some sparkly accents drawn in. These are also double-sided to see from any angle. The next two pictures are of the favor bag toppers and blank food tents:

 

The first are the toppers that read "Danke", or "thank you" in German (one of the few German phrases we, and probably a lot of people, know.) These feature the little boy and girl again, along with the flag.The images measure about 2.5-3". These get stapled to the top of little baggies. The blank food labels also feature the pretzel and barrel. The taller images here measure about 3-3.5". 

We really enjoyed working on this party package! It was the first "legit" package we worked on and hopefully not the last! 

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a fantastic weekend!

An Elmo Birthday!

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far. At least it's already Thursday! And a day closer to the weekend. We have been uber busy around here, with the start of the school looming and everyone having their kid's birthdays. We actually had little to do yesterday, so we took a little break. However, we wanted to share some of our newest projects with you. The first is some decor for an Elmo-themed party for twin 1-year olds (how cute?!) Unfortunately, some of the pictures have quite an orange tint to them...or at least the wall does...
The first project is a super cute and colorful 'Happy Birthday' banner:

The banner features Elmo holding the number 1and two presents on the end:

Of course we used pop-dots on the letters and images, and the polka dots add another cute touch!
The next item we made was a set of cake toppers. The first piece is Elmo, along with two Sesame Street-inspired name signs:

 These three toppers are double-sided and are on 8" sticks. We added some ribbon to the name signs. The last thing we made were some goody bags for the kiddos:

 These little cuties feature an excited Elmo, because who wouldn't be happy at a party?!
Thanks for stopping by. We'll have some more new projects to share with you this week.

The Newest Items in Our Frozen-Inspired Party Collection!

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a fantastic Tuesday! We have been quite the busy beavers working on new projects to share/post/sell and hopefully all this work will pay off in the future. As you may have seen, our newest party decor is based on the movie "Frozen". There are a few more things we have to add to the collection, but we just wanted to share what is done so far:

Some of these were already posted here on our blog (like the invitation and thank you note) but we also added a few other items. The items here feature Queen Elsa, Princess Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Cliff, a Love Troll. Clockwise from 12:00, we have a cake topper, some party favors, centerpiece sticks, the invitations and thank you notes, some name/place cards, matching cupcake wrappers, and the picks to match. We also have a few things with Sven, the reindeer, and Hans (even though he's not the nicest).
As we mentioned earlier, we added these items to our Etsy shop yesterday. Pretty sure that was the hardest (and probably least-fun) part of all of this... Oh well. Like we said, hope it's worth it and we can make something other than superheroes (not that we're complaining about it. Too much.) I guess now it's time to start on the next party- thinking of a fall owl/woodland party!
And, a big congratulations to our friends Annie and Tyler who have completed their cross-country bike journey! They are quite impressive!!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

Relaxing in the Summer Sun, Just Letting off Steam!

Good afternoon! We hope you are having a wonderful week so far. It's been quite hot here- feeling like a snowman in the summer (hence the title!) So, how do we let of our steam? We craft, of course! No surprise there. But, we have a few new banners to share with you today. They go along with our new "Frozen"-inspired party decorations. The biggest one is our 'Happy Birthday' banner:

The banner is bookended with Queen Elsa and Princess Anna, with Arendelle Castle in the middle. (For those of you who haven't seen the movie and have no idea what we're talking about, the movie is great, and should definitely be watched! It also makes winter seem a little closer on those hot days.)

 

We also made two other banners. We don't usually make all of these banners, but we wanted to add some listings to our Etsy shop. So, the first one we wanted to share was a high chair/"I am 1" banner and a personalized name banner: 

 

Everyone's favorite snowman makes an appearance in the "I am 1" banner:

Each snowflake piece features a popped up image, either a character or letter. And of course, we added glitter with the writing and tulle, which is a little hard to see. We also added matching ribbons to hold the pieces together.
Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully we'll be able to post the rest of our complete "Frozen" projects tomorrow. And then we can go on with a new set! Have a fantastic day!


View our Listings Here: "Frozen"-Inspired Banners on Etsy

New "Frozen" Projects Are Here!

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a fantastic day! It's been quite hot here, which makes wanting to do anything kind of rough. However, we've been fighting the urge to be lazy and have completed some "Frozen"-inspired projects, as promised!
These newly-listed Etsy items are just the first few pieces in this new collection.

The first two projects are an invitation and a printed thank you note. When you remove the invitation from its folder, everyone's favorite snowman comes out:

Of course we added some glitter (what princess doesn't love glitter?!) and pop-dotted some of the accents, including the snowflake on the thank you note:

How adorable is this set?! We have a few more projects coming in the next few days, including some banners and decorations. (The banners will be up once they're put together- apparently our missing hole punch is actually at home, and yes, Mom, it will be easier to get a new one instead of cleaning!)
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

New Etsy Listings:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TwoEarlyBirds/search?search_query=Frozen&order=date_desc&view_type=gallery&ref=shop_search

We're Celebrating Oktoberfest!

Guten tag! We hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday! It's been a pretty great day for us. The sun is shining and the creativity is flowing- can't get much better than that! (In our opinion, at least!)
I know it's a little later than normal, but here is today's project. As you can tell from the title, we have created an Oktoberfest party. It may not be for another few weeks, but it never hurts to start early!

This came to fruition the other day as we were driving around town and saw that they were having their own Oktoberfest celebration. It helps that, until a few years ago, there used to be a brewery in town, I guess. And what better way to celebrate our German heritage?! Below is a collage of some of the projects:

How cute are the little kiddies?! They pop up here and there in the projects, along with a few other designs. Like the German flag and a barrel!
Thanks for stopping by! Prost!

Halloween Gatefold Invitation

Hey there! I hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far, enjoying the waning days of summer before school starts again. Today I have a very simple card to share with you!

It is a gatefold card, set up as a party invitation! Who wouldn't want to be invited to a party where the animals are dressed up?! (Reminds me of one of our aunts, but not in the best way... story for another day) I welded the three shapes together in craftroom (rectangle and two matching frames) and cut it in black. The top layer was just the frames cut again. The flap wasn't staying down all the way, so the "It's a Party!" is there for gravity to pull it back closed.

I stamped and embossed the "bewitching hour" and tried to color in the moon and stars. Neon yellow doesn't do a great job covering brown. Who knew? At least the moon looks good enough. Also, I have realized that no matter what the project, I should always have someone else do the handwriting. Mine always looks so sloppy. You'd think as someone who teaches kids how to form letters I would be better, or at least neater! Sometimes I try to make it look fancy and it ends up looking kind of foolish. I should probably stick to Photoshop or Word. Oh well...

Thanks for stopping by!

Some Boo-tacular Halloween Decor

Happy Wednesday! We hope everyone is having a great day, and everyone is as happy as a camel on hump day! We've been super busy, working on holiday projects, some new and some that were supposed to be done last year. Oops. Anyway, today's post is part of a new Halloween party we are working on. This is the centerpiece we designed:

There are four different pieces to the centerpiece. The haunted house is 9" high and the two little monsters are about 4" tall. (Googly eyes make everything better, unless they are very different in size. Granted, the size difference is in the design, but still.)

The little moon is probably my favorite! It's not really that small, but it's just so darn cute! And the little bat just adds even more cuteness to it!

 Like we mentioned before, it's part of a party line we've been working on. We have a ton more projects to share coming up!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a superb day!

Monsters Galore!

I hope everyone is having a great Monday! But if you're having a case of the Mondays, this will definitely cheer you up! We have a fantastic Monsters, Inc party set-up to share with you.

 

Even though no one we know is having a birthday party any time soon, and definitely not a Monsters, Inc one, it was super fun to make. The first part is a banner wishing the birthday kid a "Happy Boo-Day," and is surrounded by a cutout garland.

 

Next up is some door and/or wall decor. We made a wreath with Mike, Sulley, and Boo. Along with it, is a door hanger with the birthday kid's name and age.

 

Next up are the cards for the party. The invitation measures 5x7 with all of the party information. There is also a thank you note for after the fun, both with cutouts with the main characters.

 

Finally, we have a favor bag. This might be my favorite part of all. It is a flip down bag, or could be made with ribbon or string to tie it shut, and is modeled after Boo's door. We made a birthday card that looked like this, but it sure makes one really cool bag. 

 Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Friday! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday yesterday. We were fortunate enough to be able to spend it family we haven’t seen in a while. Our brother and his crew came up from Virginia, so that put some pep into the party! A lot of food, some running around, and a few broken glasses later, everyone slept well last night! 

Today’s post is a round-up of projects and desserts we made for the party:

Our party kind of started the night before. We wanted to try something fun with sparklers and our camera. This is the middle picture on top. Although we were just fooling around, the picture does look pretty neat! The big picture here is of our tablescape. We had so many other ideas but ran out of time. Too many favors, not enough time… There are a few close-ups from the table, including the centerpiece we threw together with pieces on sale at Michaels, and the little Uncle Sam favor in the bottom corner. We included some glow sticks and bubbles. There were also the desserts, including the cupcakes (more tomorrow) and the s’more bar (absolutely delicious!) Who knew there were so many options for a s’more?? We only had a few options, like the favorite “peanut butter and jelly” ones (honey grahams, peanut butter cups, and strawberry marshmallows), or the mint ones (Andes mints), and the cookies and cream one. We have a book we got on our trip a few summers ago, but forgot it at home, unfortunately. (As I was writing this, I thought, “Ooh, mint chocolate chip”- an Andes mint and a marshmallow, layered between two chocolate chip cookies?? Yes, please!)

Thanks for stopping by! Join us again tomorrow for our holiday edition of Cupcake Saturday!

Continuing With Our New Bags

Happy Friday! We hope everyone had wonderful work week. Our vacation is coming to an end, which means that we have a lot to catch up with everything we didn't do this week. A rainy day is a good day to do so. But, before we do that, we wanted to show some more of the princess bags we designed.

These are four of our new bags. Like the ones we had yesterday, these are also embellished with some glitter and embossing. Like we said yesterday, these are much more fun to make. Can't go wrong with glitter, or little rhinestones. Tiana is now my favorite- her necklace is just perfect, in my opinion! We have a few more that have to be completed, but we'll share them with you when we're finished.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day

How We've Been Keeping Busy

Good evening! We hope everyone is having a superb week so far. We have been on Spring Break this week, which should mean that we have a lot of time to work on new projects. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, we've spent a lot of the week working on Etsy orders. We've had quite a few orders, some pretty large. Most of them have been for our Superhero party favors. We also made a few princess bags, but they haven't been quite as popular. So, we decided to change them up a bit, and hope that they become 'popular'. We'd rather make princesses than superheros- they're so much prettier and more fun. So, here is what we came up with:

This is the first set of redesigned bags. We had a lady who was interested in these four characters. Rapunzel may be my favorite ever! Each bag has been slightly embellished, either with glitter or embossing, to add another dimension to them. We have some more characters to share with you, but we'll save those for tomorrow!
Thanks for stopping by!