Rainbow Art Party on a Budget {Part 2}

It is party time in the Schloss household. We have 3 birthdays in less than 30 days. Oh my it is a busy month!! I love throwing parties but they can get quite pricey very fast so I always challenge myself to see how much fun I can create on as little money as possible. I threw this party for 12 kids and spent under $100. I say that’s not to shabby. Check out Part 1 here!

Activity

We had two activities that were so much fun!! We had a photo booth for our first activity. I bought colored table cloths in a rainbow of colors from Walmart for 97 cents each and staple gunned them to the wall. You could probably tape them but I didn’t want to have to worry about them falling.

For the props I had the girls go around the house and look for fun things to take pictures with and they set everything up in an Amazon box we had gotten all the art supplies in. So obviously this part was free!!

As you can see for $6.00 they got loads of entertainment from it.

Tip: I made sure Delaney took pictures with each girl and I am going to print them each one and have her write her thank you notes on the back.

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For our painting craft everyone painted a canvas. I chose the flat canvases because they were a much better deal but you could use normal ones if you want. I got 12 of them for 13.74 on Amazon. (Amazon prices change often but I have included links to everything I bought because the prices are so good!) To avoid having them come up with something to paint I cut each of their initials out of vinyl and let them paint all over the canvas in whatever way they wanted and when they were dry I took off the vinyl and they had a white initial in the middle of their picture. You can get small packages of vinyl on Amazon for fairly inexpensive. I ordered a bigger one because I wanted to have it for other projects but each sheet came out to 38 cents!!They turned out way better than I had hoped and the kids had a blast painting them. I even found cute aprons that were a crazy good price (12 for 6.99) so they each got one to wear at the party and take home. We wrote their names on them with colored sharpies.

Food

Of course the next important part is the food!! I always try to have my parties in the afternoon so I don’t have to serve a full meal. When you are trying to plan a party on a budget this is probably the biggest money saver!!!

To go with our rainbow art party theme we had paint brush pretzel rods, paint brush rice krispie treats, rainbow gold fish, popcorn cups with sour candy squares, and a rainbow fruit tray!!

On a side note I bought the Wilton candy dots in red, yellow, and blue to melt and roll the pretzel rods and rice krispies in. I figured I could mix them and we could get the other colors we wanted instead of buying all of them. It didn’t work but the kids did have fun trying. The purple was the only one that was okay but it still was pretty gray. Oh well I tried!!

For drinks we had a rainbow soda bar. The kids thought this was the best part! I think some of them tried every flavor. We had strawberry, orange, lemonade, lemon lime, blue Gatorade (I couldn’t find blue soda.), and grape.

For the cake we made a chocolate frosted cake and my daughter put a paint pallet on it. The number one way to save money on a party is to make your own cake!! My daughter and I took a cake decorating class earlier this year so know our homemade cakes look awesome!! It’s a lot of fun too!!