Wow, it's taken me this long to finally post the results of my efforts! I ended up being under budget. Hurray! And kept the entire party under $100. This was mostly due to my secret shopping and home-crafting of many of the decorations. Food ended up costing me a pretty penny and was a majority of the expenses, as I predicted. Anyway, everyone had fun! Here are some pictures of the decorations!
Makin' the red velvet cupcakes! They were divine.
This is my costume, fully completed. Looks pretty good, right? You can also see some of the kitchen decorations in the background. Every room had a theme, and this one's was the Red Queen's Castle. So there were card houses, card suits, hearts, and lots of red!
I made the popcorn bags out of red paper bags and cut the tops off in jags. I then carved a stamp out of a potato in the shape of skulls and hearts. On the kitchen table, for the center piece, I made a card house and scattered heart-shaped, red confetti all over.
The dining room's theme was the Mad Hatter Tea Party.
On the table I placed tea cups, mismatched, with napkins and teapots. There are perfume and nail polish bottles on the table that have "Drink Me!" written on them. To the right of the bottles is a giant pill I found at my university to advertise some drug. It has "Eat me!" written on it. The book is a book on etiquette I had in my library. I put it out there, too.
This is my center piece. It is my giant, homemade hat with a teapot I found from the Goodwill. There is a fishing lure sticking out the spout. A rat I found from the dollar store hides behind the hat.
This is another craft I made out of an old children's book about rabbits. It's supposed to look like it's flying. There'll be a better example later. If you're interested in how to make this, check out the book
The Repurposed Library.
When guests enter the house, they enter the forest. Here are the butterflies and mushrooms. I had some dead sticks and garlands scattered about to make it seem more foresty.
Close up of my paper-mache mushrooms. I have a tutorial on how to make these
here.
For a terrible surprise during the scavenger hunt, I placed a bunch of mannequins in the basement :3 I got these off a friend's coworker whose best friend died. Phew, hope you caught up with that.
The family room's theme was whimsical and surrealism.
Couldn't resist hahaha
Click pictures to enlarge. This is my moon. I made the clouds by wrapping them in discount fabric I bought at a garage sale. The moon is simply cut from cardboard and painted with acrylics.
This is what it looked like at the party. Best part was, the night of the party, the moon was a waning crescent like the one I made. Totally unplanned. ;)
And that was that! Everyone had a blast and it was a lot of fun to make. Hope I've given everyone some ideas for their own Alice party!
