Comic Book Birthday

Ok, so it was really a Batman Birthday. 

My previous posts showed the games, which were a huge hit. I finished off the Bat Symbol Game with a sticky-backed foam cut out of the batman logo. We went into sudden death because it was just too close to say who won, so to decide an official winner they went to a water balloon toss. 

Larry has an egg allergy so I ended up making, Whoopie Pies, with toxic sludge colored filling, 

and white cake with classic Adam West Batman Purple frosting. 

I use an egg replacer which works wonderfully, you can also use apple sauce, which is always in our house. 

I lost all my round cake pans over the years, So I used a heart shape. This worked out well, as you can see. It gave me a rough outline for what I needed the wings. I also found on clearance at Target sugar Comic Book Shapes, hence the lightening bolts and the Boom. We worked those types of things throughout so it worked out perfectly. 

 By making the cake, the whoopie pies, the games and having most of the parents drop and go, I saved a ton of money.  Including Ingredients for the treats, the food for the party and the goody bags, I spent $61!!!! Normally a party would cost me upwards of $120! 

I cut my cost in half, and you would never have been able to tell! 

I also told larry he could only INVITE 8 friends, and of those 8, only four could make it, the other two who had said yes had an unexpected event happen. So I could have skipped the good bags and just have done prizes and it would have been just as fun!  

Party on a budget

We are having a Batman Themed 8th Birthday for Larry this sunday.

I'm unemployed and wanted games for the party.

Sitting quietly on the ride home from a day trip to Salem, it clicked.

I wanted to make a bean bag toss. I wanted to take some wood and have John drill some holes in it, and I'd paint it.

Well, that's not what happened. John wasn't exactly sure how much time it would take, if he could get it how I wanted it. I was sort of grumpy about it. Then we walked into the house.

Leaning against the bookcase, a 4 foot long box. It was pretty Sturdy considering it's cardboard. So I run up to John's mom's craft room. I found all the basic comic book colors, Ivory, Black, Yellow, Blue, Red, Green, Purple. I happened upon some special colors, NEONS!!!! Pink, Orange and Yellow.

I grabbed the embroidery hoop to trace the circles. Grabbed a knife and cut out the circles.

I Painted the base color, Ivory! it's almost a newpaper white. We did 2 coats of it.

We put numbers around each hole to give them some incentive, we started at 5 and went up to 80. We basically Doubled each one: 5, 10, 20, 40, 80!

We drew old school comic expressions, "Pow" "bang"  things like that. using every color we had we made the best game we could, FOR FREE!!!

 

So I tossed and turned all night wanting to have a second game. I wanted something simple, there's kids as young as 2.5 coming after all. 

Send up the Signal! 

I used a piece of the cardboard from the night before. 

I painted the background black. I used three coats to get a nice even all over color.

I mixed the regular Yellow and Neon yellow to get to the Batman Logo yellow! 

I got a little fancy, and decided that there was not enough excitement. I don't have the most experience drawing, but I know my Batman Villians. So in the corners I wanted to do something fun. Using

Again, a little imagination and about 4 hours worth of work I created TWO FREE GAMES! 

I have to make a few Bat Symbols for the pin the tail game. 

It's going to be a blast, and I'm excited for all the stuff I can buy because I saved a bunch of money by using my free time in a good way! It's all about thinking outside the box! and I did just that!