Private Investigators Birthday

Hi Everyone,

it's time to show you what I've been doing those past weeks. 

It's been my girls' Birthday last week so I spend the last few weeks with preparations. The motto was private investigators. Here are the invitations I created.

 

Very simple, I printed the word (it means Invitation) in red on white card stock and cut the card stock to panels. The font is called "Top Secret". Then I stamped the foot prints all over the panel and adhered it to a grey card base. The stamps I already had left over from a previous project. I cut them myself from fun foam.

I printed the words "Streng Geheim" (Top Secret) in the same font and colour across the envelopes, but unfortunately forgot to take a picture of them.

Next task were the giveaway bags. I got some sweets, cheap toy handcuffs and invisible pens (to be read in black light) for all of the kids. I also printed out a Caesar cipher disc from the Internet and I got a bunch of little note pads, that I made into personalised note books. I am pretty proud of these. 

I cut and scored a black card stock cover to match the pad and stamped the front and back with white foot prints. Then I adhered the red die cut letters (Tim Holtz Alphabetical) to the front, mixing upper and lower case letters. 
In order to get the letters straight, I always arrange them and then use a strip of post-it tape to keep the spacing, leaving the lower edge free of tape, so I can see were exactly I place the word. Then I use liquid glue to adhere them down and let them dry a bit before removing the tape carefully. On the next picture you can see how the note books look when opened.

Of course all those goodies needed to go in a bag. Usually I use small store-bought gift bags and modify them to match the motto, but there are no black gift bags, at least not where I live. So I had to think of something else. Luckily I still had plain white treat bags, about the size to fit a card. 

I needed a good way to close them, therefore I die cut the Stampin' Up "Top Note" die from black card stock and scored it in half. Then I stamped white foot prints across it.
With the books personalised, I needed name tags on the gift bags, but I didn't want to go through all the fuzz with the die cut letters again (we had invited 16! kids...). Therefore I just printed the names, cut them out and adhered them to the black card stock.

Then I filled the bags and stapled the card stock over the top. The hand cuffs didn't fit in, so I used a piece of baker's twine to keep keys and cuffs together and attached them to the bag with another staple, hidden underneath the black top.

For the day itself we prepared a little treasure hunt or actually a private investigator training programme, including games for team work, agility, speed etc. We also included the cipher disc and invisible pen that would be in the treat bags at the end, so they had to decode and puzzle a little as we went along. 

At the beginning of the party we took a picture of each child, so before leaving, they would not only get their "set of basic equipment" (the treat bags), but also their personal "Private Investigator ID card".

I had prepared a word file ready for print with all the cards already filled in, so that I had to add only the pictures during the party. The photo would be were the fingerprint is in my example. After printing I just had to cut them with my guillotine, round the corners and put them in their clips.

We had a great day, the kids loved it all. 

So, that's it from me for today, have a great day
Ela