$20 DIY Star Wars Birthday Party!

As promised [yesterday] I have decided to share a small DIY on how to decorate for a Star Wars birthday party. As parents we are often stressed out when it comes to our little one's magical day. We are running around like chicken's with our heads cut off, trying to whip up food, presents, an RSVP's. Decorations can often be the biggest hassle of all, seeing as how we dish out so much money for one day. Of course no expense is spared with it comes to our wonderful children's parties, but sometimes money just isn't something easy to come by. Like us for example, spending a bunch of money for a few family get-togethers just wasn't something I could do. So I decided to take things to the next level and only budge $20 for decorations AND cake. Food was another story - yes there was a budget for that as well but it isn't included in today's DIY. 

First of all, with any DIY you should have a layout with color ideas and a basic template of how to properly represent the theme you're going for. As for a Star Wars theme, you basically need red/blue - Jedi side and Darth side, space, a themed piece - we went with the death star as my son's favorite character is Darth Vader, and of course a few small details to tie it all together. 

Majority of our items came from Walmart with a few things from Dollar Tree. From Walmart our first purchase was a black table cloth (97 cents), which became the backdrop to our "space wall". I used thumbtacks on all four corners to hold it up in place. Then from Dollar Tree I bought a bag of golden star confetti ($1). To put the stars onto the black table cloth, I just placed small dots of regular glue and stuck each individual star all over. This took a bit of time, but it was so worth it. I just had to be sure to space out the big, medium, and small stars to give the "realistic" space effect I was looking for. This was by far my favorite part of all the decorations. 

For the letters, we purchased 2 yellow large card paper from Dollar Tree (2 for $1) and used an online "Star Wars alphabet" stencil to create the letters. I just used a ruler and eyeballed each letter to create the "Happy Birthday" sign. With tape and a little glue, it stuck beautifully. One of the many perks of using a cheap table cloth, everything sticks with ease. 

To create the really cool Lightsabers, I used 1 of the yellow card papers I purchased and cut it in half. Then I rolled each half into a tube, securing it with tape sideways and length wise. I used some red streamers we purchased from Dollar Tree ($1) and black streamers we purchased from Walmart (97 cents - we had to purchase the red one from Dollar Tree as Walmart was out) and simply secured the streamers to the rolled paper with tape. Just be sure to wrap the paper with the streamers with a tight angle. This allows for it to give equal coverage without lumps, just don't pull too hard or you'll rip it. Do the same thing with blue streamers (97 cents from Walmart) and some black streamers. These colored streamers along with white streamers from Walmart (97 cents), you can create a pattern effect on the party table to differentiate the "good side" and the "bad side". 

Simply add a few balloons of blue (97 cents from Walmart) to the corner of the blue side and a few red balloons of red (97 cents from Walmart) to the the corner of the red side and you will have a bit of added pizzazz. 

For the death star, you just need some silver balloons (97 cents from Walmart), a black permanent marker, some Q-tips, and a little bit of glue. I chose to use a low-temp hot glue gun to attach the black colored (I used the permanent marker) Q-tips to create the ray area. With your black permanent marker, create a few abstract squares and rectangles and a circle for the ray. With a simple "death star" picture from online, you should be able to easily tweak it and create your very own death star balloon. It may not be perfect, but to me it was pretty cool. With some thin sewing string and a white thumbtack, you can hang it from the ceiling and  make it look like a flying death star. 

Lastly, we have the table setting. To create "Lightsaber napkins", just wrap the red and blue napkins (97 cents each from Walmart) into rolls and wrap with a small piece of black streamer, securing with tape. This will make for a cool place setting, where your guests can easily slide off the black streamer and use their napkin with ease! The cups were just a pack of white paper cups ($1 from Dollar Tree) and use an online cartoon picture of a storm trooper and Darth Vader. They weren't perfection, but they certainly were cool. My son loved them. I only made one Darth Vader cup for my son - he was the leader/birthday boy - and everyone else got storm trooper cups. With some white plates, the table was complete. 

To tie everything together, I just placed a few Star Wars items we already owned, around the living room and bookcase - the one against the space wall. Our Star Wars Tsum-Tsums were placed all over the bookcase, separated by light side and dark side. Of course Luke was on top of the record player with Darth Vader, "battling" it out. On our TV stand, we placed my son's Disney Infinity 3.0 Star Wars characters around the TV, again with Luke and Vader doing a battle scene in front of the death star.  

For the decorations I spent under $15, which left me with just enough for my son's cake, frosting, and candle. All which were from Walmart (under $2 for the cake mix, under $2 for the frosting, the candle was 99 cents) except for the black icing. That was created using my food coloring, left over frosting after putting globs of it all over the cake (which you can see in yesterdays post), and a plastic bag. Believe me, NOTHING went to waste.

I have to admit, this was one of my favorite birthday parties I have created for my son. Granted it was very small - as I outlined in yesterday's post - and I didn't have to worry about groups of people to impress, but regardless my son was in awe of "how cool" it looked. He was thoroughly happy and that's all that mattered to me. Overall, it was a perfect birthday for the perfect little boy. 

So as you can see, birthday's don't have to mean dishing out big bucks. All you need is a little bit of creativeness and perhaps a little inspiration!