Birthday party crafts - PINTEREST inspiration PART 1

I was going to wait until all the crafts were done and i could take some lovely at-the-birthday-party shots but i am just way too excited about them not to share.  I am planning the kids' first birthday party and the theme will be The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I know, it's been done a thousand times but it is so cute and the book really lends itself to an easy party theme, what with all the food and such.  We're going to have about 12 kids or so from the ages of 1-12 so making gifts bags and activities that will satisfy everyone will be challenging. In preparation I jumped on pinterest and just for kicks looked up "baby food jar" thinking i could use all the baby food jars that the kids go through for something decorate-y.  Well, there are a ton of adorable crafty ideas, of course, for baby food jars and the two that I clung to were 1. BUBBLES and 2. favors.

For the bubbles I used these super adorable bubble jars from Victoria at vixenmade for a pinkalicious birthday party with the pipe cleaner wand.  Who knew you could use a pipe cleaner to blow bubbles.  But it really works!!

Now here is my version of Caterpillar Bubble Jars.  Basically I used green pipe cleaners to make the wand, punched two side-by-side holes in the top middle of the baby food jar, strung the end of the wand up through and down the second hole twisted around and secured with a dab of hot glue, making sure it lays flat. Then I cut a circle of red felt and made the eyes and mouth from green felt and yellow card stock and glued them on.  I also painted the rim of the jar top with green acrylic paint. I think i'll probably also paint legs onto the side of the bottle.  I am thinking about making my own bubble solution but haven't done that yet.  I found a couple of recipes to try from the blog Mom Always Finds Out.

 So for the party favors I used these pins as inspiration:

From KatherineMaries, this adorable Sunshine Easter party favor:

and these super adorable Lady Bug favors from Becca at The Life of Peanut, as featured in this apartment therapy post

So I thought - ok - caterpillars - bugs, how about Bug Jar Party Favors!!!  So what iI did was:

1. Paint the top of jars white

2. For the handle, punch side by side holes on each side of the jar top

3. Thread a green pipe cleaner down through one hole about an inch and then back up through the second hold. Twist around to secure. Repeat at the other end to make a handle

4. Paint a swatch of chalkboard paint on the side of the jar, to be able to write each child's name on it

5. Punch 4 holes in the top of the jar for "air holes" for bugs, of course

6. Fill with fruit-shaped candies like Jolly Rancher Sours, a gummy worm and a gummy butterfly

Voila - Very Hungry Caterpillar Bug Jar Party Favors!!

I figured that not every kid is going to use these jars to catch bugs but they might use them to store little things like barrettes or coins or whatnot so I didn't want to make them TOO theme-y.  Just enough to be adorable but multi-purposable.

So what do you think??  I am going to pinterest my own crafts and see how they get around the internet.  Hope you like them!!

More crafts to come (invitations, centerpieces etc) in Part 2

Permission was granted to use individual photos from other websites. 
Thanks to Becca, Victoria and Katherine!!

All other photos are property of www.experimentmom.blogspot.com. Please contact me at jenniferlgardner1@gmail.com for permission to use.

http://www.vixenmade.com/2011/08/pinkalicious-party.html