sun

here-comes-the-sun-yellow-sun-felt-banner

As you know, we’re thrilled about summer. We’re spoiled by the Colorado sunshine. There’s nothing like a sunny, blue-sky Colorado day. We celebrated sunshine with our little darlings, and it was so much fun! Oriental Trading Company helped us make a bright and colorful party – they were the source for all our party goods.

Not only is this party all about the sun, but it helped us introduce the Beatles to our kids. Here Comes the Sun is a classic, so you can bet the kids had “doo, doo, doo, doo” stuck in their heads, just like we did.

All the details from the party are below.

DIY Felt Banners
Cut the felt into a banner shape. Cut and trace paper (or stencil) letters onto colorful felt. Once all the letters are traced, cut them out. We made banners with the lyrics to the song, Here Comes the Sun. Glue (hot glue worked great) the letters onto the white felt banner. Find tree branches or wood rods to hang them. We used hot glue to roll them on a tree branch. We made DIY Tassels to hang on the bottom of each one from felt. First we cut strips of felt, then cut tiny strips 3/4 way up each piece, and rolled it into a tassel. We used hot glue to keep it rolled tight.

DIY Sun Decor
A sunshine party is not a sunshine party without, well, the sun. Buy yellow tissue paper fans, open them up, and then glue a circular piece of orange paper in the center. Easy-peasy.

Sunshine Craft
Our girls love to craft, so the highlight of the party was the sun sand key chains from Oriental Trading. They made colorful sand art that they now proudly carry on their backpacks.

When they weren’t crafting with sand, they were doodling with chalk. The girls drew variations of the sun and its rays, and hopped on each one. They were walking (or hopping) on sunshine.

Other Details
A fun favor from the party was a sweet new pair of sunny shades.

Popcorn is always a favorite snack for our kids. We served the popped goodness in bright yellow popcorn boxes. We pulled the sun shapes from extra pairs of sunglasses for a fun popcorn box detail.

We absolutely love, love the glass milk bottles. They were perfect containers for the sand, as well as juice for the girls. A straw was taped to each bottle with yellow patterned washi tape.

Enjoy the summer sun!

Oriental Trading sent us some items of our choosing for this post, free of charge. We’re so happy they did! All opinions are honest, and our own. No other type of compensation was received. Thanks for supporting the companies that support j. sorelle. We love Oriental Trading, even before this post.

Before a week of no blogging, nowhere to be but the pool or the beach and no DIY projects allowed {aka vacation}, Jessica had to get in one last DIY project. With towels invincible to Bleach {we still have no idea why the color didn’t bleach}, she couldn’t make them like Studio DIY.

Plan B was to spray lemon juice on the towels, and lay them in the sun. Nope, it too, was unsuccessful.

Plan C was dependable fabric paint, and it worked just fine!

These towels make for a great gift for teachers as school’s out for summer, birthday party favors with names, as well as hostess gifts for those who live on the beach.

Here’s how we did it.

Materials:

Towels
White fabric paint {or white acrylic paint combined with gel medium}
Contact paper to make stencil or stencil {we used our Silhouette America Portrait to cut the letters on contact paper}
Stencil Paintbrush {round, flat tip}

Directions:

Design your words with Silhouette software, and use the electronic cutting machine to cut the contact paper. Make sure the words are mirrored, so they appear correctly on the towel, and not backwards.

Prep your painting space. Make sure to place a cardboard under your towels for paint that may bleed through.

Remove the back of the contact paper. Lay the stencils or words on the towels. We really liked the contact paper because it stuck to the towels, just enough to work as a stencil, but not too much so it was easy to remove.