A few weekends ago, we held a birthday party for DS at Build-A-Bear Workshop. He loves going there to get a new bear, and we figured a lot of his friends would like it as well. Surprisingly, many of them had never been to BABW before, so fun was had by all.

He built a really cute little bear that he went on to name “Floor Mop.” I wish I was kidding, but I’m not. The kid is either hilarious or crazy. I haven’t decided which one. At least he’s adorable, which always seems to be his saving grace.

I like to do very theme-y birthday parties, because, well, of course I do. I found BABW placemats, napkins, and plates at Birthday Express. I even appliqued a tee for him that matched his invitations. However, I couldn’t really find anything to use for cupcake toppers. The crafty diva in me just had to come out to play. You can do this, too!

I printed out the “Cele-Bear-Ate!” image from the Internet (it also matches the invites) and created the “Happy Bear-thday Zack!” image on my computer (I use GIMP for tasks such as this, because I love it and it’s FREE!). I then used one of my kitchen glasses and traced out larger circles on red cardstock. Yes, I traced. I’m too cheap to buy one of those $20 circle punches at the craft store. I’m old school like that. I traced two red circles for each cupcake and then cut everything out.

I grabbed my glue stick, some Scotch tape, and a package of lollipop sticks I picked up at the craft store and got to work. I used the glue stick to glue each of the printed circles onto a red circle. I then taped the lollipop stick to the back of the “Cele-Bear-Ate!” circles and used the glue stick on the edges of it to attach the “Happy Bear-thday Zack!” circles. It makes a little red circle sandwich. The red circles aren’t fully attached to each other around the area of the stick (if you can visualize that), but that’s okay.

Because I don’t know when to stop (moderation is a serious issue with me), I used some spray glitter to make each side a little shimmery and tied matching curling ribbon to the bases of decoration.

When we reached our party location (aka the mall food court since no food or drink is allowed in BABW), I added the cupcake toppers to the cupcakes. I think they ended up being super cute little centerpieces all on their on.

DS and his (14!) little buddies seemed to enjoy them. I even saw a few parents taking the toppers home as souvenirs. 😉

Happy Third Birthday, Zack! I find it hard to believe that you’ve already been in our life for three years. It just blows my mind, but it’s been the best three years of our lives.

P.S. Until now, I’ve always referred to Zack as “DS.” I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m scared of his name being on the Internet or something. I guess the cat is out of the bag now. LOL My DH is named Tom, just in case you ever wanted to know. My social security numbers is…just kidding. 🙂

Before our Zack was born, Tom and I had a set of really awesome coasters from Crate and Barrel in our living room. They were slate and chunky and natural and cool. I loved them.

We’ve been without coasters for nearly 3 years now. We didn’t really care because we had old cruddy end tables. However, we bought new end tables about a month ago, and I’ve been making Tom put his Diet Pepsis on notepads and magazines so they wouldn’t leave a ring. We needed coasters before I became Joan Crawford-esque by yelling, “No drink rings on the table!!”

Have you been in the market for coasters lately? I found this one:

And this one:

And then this beauty:

Um, no me gusta. Are you kidding me? And more importantly, who is buying these?!?Anyway, I figured that the perfect solution was to make my own. It’s really a pretty easy thing to do.

I bought 6 cheap ceramic tiles (they were 16 cents each!) and some felt dots at Home Depot. Then, I went over to Michael’s and picked up 2 sheets of 12×12 scrapbooking paper that matched my living room decor, a bottle of coordinating acrylic craft paint, a foam brush and a bottle of Mod Podge.

I measured the tiles and cut squares of scrapbooking paper that where 1/8″ smaller than the tiles. I cut them smaller than the tiles because I didn’t want the paper to overlap the sides of the tiles if I didn’t get the paper on them exactly center.

I laid out a garbage bag so I wouldn’t ruin my kitchen table with the glue. Don’t use paper towels or newspaper. They will stick to the tiles when you put the Mod Podge on them, and it will make a huge ugly mess. Don’t ask me how I know that.

Next, I used the foam brush to spread a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the tiles and then centered a square of paper on the top. I smoothed any bubbles out with my fingertips.

Once the paper was applied, the tiles looked like this:

I let the Mod Podge dry for about 20 minutes, and then I broke out my brown paint. I wanted to paint the edges of the tiles and the edges of the paper so that they looked a little worn. I used a dry paper towel to wipe off any extra paint on the paper. You could use colored tiles, stone tiles, or just leave just leave the edges white if you don’t want to paint them.

Lindsay tip: Did you notice that I started with six tiles and now only have four? That’s because I dropped one on the floor and broke it (doh!) and put too much paint on a second one and it looked awful (double doh!). Since this project is so cheap, buy a couple of extra tiles, just in case.

After the paint dried, I applied a coat of Mod Podge to the top and let it dry for about 20 minutes. I repeated that process five more times for a total of six coats. I used the “hard coat” Mod Podge, so that it would really seal the paper and make a solid surface.

Once the tiles were dry, I added four felt dots to the bottom so that they wouldn’t scratch my tables. See? You can even see my sloppy paint job! No one is ever going to see the bottom of your coasters, so it doesn’t really matter.

And there ya go! Four coasters that coordinate with your living room decor instead of having cats or fish or eagles on them. Now wasn’t that fun?

 

Now, my tables are protected from those evil drink rings. I’m not sure these are actually any safer for Zack, who will probably now use them as weapons, but they sure are cute.