Both of my children were born in December. Poor planning. After going through the year of pictures for our 2007 photo album, I realized with sadness and a sense of pride that our older daughter grew up this year. She just turned five and is asking questions like “Does Santa have a job?” and too frequently dismisses things as “just pretend”. She is coming up with her own (and surprisingly funny) jokes and has started wearing blue jeans and a ponytail.
We read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland over the last few months and decided to have a birthday party with a Wonderland theme. I’ve been looking at the Alice birthday party pictures posted over at Design Mom and thinking what a lovely theme it would be. I’m posting pictures and download-able invitations, party hats and garland.
Of course the girls wanted to dress up as the characters from the book, so I made Alice and Queen of Hearts dresses. I made these giant tissue roses to hang from a chandelier using this method. But I stacked two or more groups of folded tissue paper in an “X” shape before wrapping with the chenille stems, which created fullness for such a large flower. Also, I find that it helps reduce tearing if you fluff the tissue before you wrap it with the stem.
I made this mobile with fabric created by iron-on transfer paper. I just cut out the designs and sewed together with an Alice in Wonderland patterned fabric. I then sewed on ribbon and tied each one to an arm of the chandelier. The mushrooms were made with felt, burlap, stuffing and thread spools. I embroidered the dots by machine, made a basting stitch to gather them, stuffed the inside, and hot glued the tops to the base. This was a very last minute project, but one of my favorites.
I made two garlands; one with playing cards (jumbo-sized cards would have been better) and one with print-outs of the characters. Here are the images for the cut-out garland: wonderland-cut-out-garland.pdf.
The children sat at a small table and drank tea. I made this runner with fabric that I bought from sonatine over at Etsy. I don’t see it there anymore, but Reprodepot has some great Alice in Wonderland fabric here. For the ribbon flower, I used the pattern at Martha Stewart that you can find here. I served scones and tea sandwiches with cream cheese and orange marmalade cut in the shape of hearts. We used red roses for the centerpiece and made cakes from this rose-shaped pan (in all the frenzy, I neglected to get a photo of the cakes). I decorated the cakes with icing flowers at the base and icing in the rose petals, but it would be lovely with powdered sugar and a rose in the center. Kids do like icing.
We played “Pin the Tail on the Cheshire Cat” with a nice poster board drawing created by my husband (no photo). We sent the kids home with this “Drink Me” hot chocolate mix, shown below. I wanted to do something with “Eat Me”, but the fourteen-year-old in me just couldn’t do it.
I did not get around to making party hats for the party, but I made some samples and am posting the templates below. You can put them together with glue dots or staples (be sure sharp part is on the outside). You can find thin elastic at the fabric store and staple or securely tape it to the inside.
Here are the party hat templates:
queen-of-hearts-party-hat1.pdf
Our invitations were a bit different, but I am posting the basic design as a fill-in invitation (.pdf file below). We printed ours on scallop edged paper, size 4.5″x6.25″(A6 envelopes).
And I have also posted a page of characters that you could print on sticker paper, which we used in the pinata. We tried a homemade pinata and it seems that my engineering skills need some work. All of the strings pulled at once! The kids didn’t really mind; they just wanted the candy. So if you want to dress up a store bought pinata (or cover up the princess design), you could glue some tissue flowers on it. Another case of me trying to make something that costs $8.99 to buy.
PS – I would also really love the pattern for the mushrooms! THANK YOU! You are extremely talented!
VERY talented indeed! Would you make mushrooms to sell? Thanks for the inspiration!
wow you seem like a great mum!!!! thanks for the ideas 😉
THANK YOU so much for posting these ideas and your templates! You have saved me from a lot of worry. I am having a Wonderland themed party next week for my 30th and needed to tie up loose ends. Your page covered everything! Thank you thank you thank you!
Please tell me where you found that fabric. i am in the process of doing a room for my 2 year old in an Alice theme…Very whimsical and fun…sort of dr. suess-ish…I am trying to find the right fabric for sheeting to go with a quilt we purchased at pottery barn…your help would be greatly appreciated…
By the way i loved your decor…i’ll definitely be using some of your ideas…thanks!
Wow, this is amazing what a beautiful gift to give your child such an incredible party to remember i’m planning one too and though i thought i had everything covered you’ve given me some more ideas. Thank you. A mum-inspiration to us all! How did you do the labels for the jars? I’d like to do something similar. Please advise. Thank you for the ideas and templates.
Wow, what great ideas! Where did you get the favor treat jars? And you made the labels for those as well?
thank you so much! this is totally helping me plan my little girls bday party!!!
this is the best themed alice i’ve seen yet!
muchas gracias!
Gosh, thanks for all the info
I run a resale shop for the American Cancer Society,
we are going to have a Mad Hatter Tea party next Oct.
All this will help us make our shop ready for the big day.
hugs
Kenna
Spectacular ! That must have been some party. Im really impressed at the creativity used especially on the hats. Ive never seen that done before
Thank you so much. I really wanted to have an old fashioned party for my 4 year old daughter…however wanted the children to have fun too. This will be perfect.
Just wonderful…thank you!
Thank you for your post and DIY/templates…I am all for supporting small businesses and independant crafters (why I love Etsy) and since I am not that crafty I have purchased a few items for my daughter’s upcoming 1st birthday which is an AIW thems – however, I wanted to incorporate some items I made myself- have been looking all over for mushrooms and other ideas! Thanks!
Wonderful. I have put all your ideas away in my Brownie Theme folder.
I looooooove your Alice in wonderland party ideas, thank you for sharing your creativity!!!
Hi,
Very cute ideas. I would love to know how you did the tissue paper roses so large and full. Can you please share how you made them?
Thanks so much,
Mary
Thanks so much for going to the trouble of showing us your hard work. Makes life so much easier for the rest of us Mums!
Hi there!
Loved all the great ideas!
My daughter is turning 8 and wanted to do this madhatter tea party so bad!
You are so creative!
Do you have the template fir the hot coco?
Would love it if you did!
Thanks for the inspiration!
Thanks for sharing the fabulous hat templates. I’ve copied some sets & glued them onto some cone party hats that cost $2. Saved having to do elastic chin straps etc. Also found some great oversized playing cards in a $2 shop.
I’m not very crafty but I’m loving putting together an Alice tea party for my daughter’s 6th unbirthday & find ideas that I think “I could do that”. There’s so many clever bloggers…like yourself… out there!
THANKS HEAPS
Jo