Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Invitations

     Sometimes Mother Nature is laughing at us.   I feel for all my friends and family up north as I believe anything under 70 F is freezing. I think snow is really pretty... to see on TV. Here in Florida she cant make up her mind on sunny 70's or 40's and 50's with rain. Despite my best plans I am sure she was laughing at me with the Valentine's I made for Gremlin.  I will tell you about that next Monday, now on to Turtles.

  As I said Gremlin did not like any of the invites we looked at in various stores. There for I got to improvise.  I took a free shape of the week from the Silhouette Store The Boo Pop Up Card.

I started with a green outer card adding thought bubbles in colors from the turtles masks.  

Each has the TMNT catchphrase past and present.

I wanted the outside to be fairly plain as the inside was the real show stopper.

I created a checkerboard pattern frame in photo shop and used the Print and Cut function on my Cameo to print then cut out the bases. Taking a free vector art picture of the TMNT eating pizza I also printed and cut them out for the pop up. I added a thought bubble and Ta-Da!

  Gremlin loved them and had complete input on the design.  I would have used a different picture but he loved that they were eating pizza, and as we had a pizza party... I caught his drift.

Something I did different this year from past parties, was to put a handwritten note in each invite for the parents. Through various circumstances my Gremlin has 7 grandparents, we don't differentiate between step or otherwise. They all have names he calls them unique to each so he knows who we are talking about. Anyway with that said we didn't feel that he needed any more than what his doting grandparents and ourselves were giving him. Also Gremlin only wanted his friends to come play he didn't care about presents.   So I asked that they just bring themselves in play clothes as we were having a "Ninja Academy" and too come and have fun.  

Well that is all for today, hopefully on Monday I can get my first Pinterest post up because it was 2 separate things I found on Pinterest and combined :)

Tootles,

Crickitt

CRAZY!

     Things are crazy this week!  Guess who forgot that Friday is Valentine's Day?  Yes, this Mom.  Thank goodness Gremlins teacher sent home a list of the kids names in the class, or I would have totally spaced.  So Wednesday's post will be up sometime tomorrow, as I spent the day searching Pinterest and the web for ideas.   I am also thinking about Monday's or Friday's doing a special blog on things I have actually made that I found on Pinterest. Anyway off to print out Valentines they may be my first "As Found on Pinterest" post.
Tootles
Crickitt

I'm Back Again with an Awesome Shredder Piñata!

Hello there Blog Land! Yes I am still alive!
     Life is full of craziness and I am neck deep and rising!  I switched from PC to Mac and that has hindered my blogging as well as my writing.  Trying to keep up with Mr Wonderful and Boo or Gremlin as I now call him, has been exhausting. Then chuck in peri menopause if you get my drift. I have lots of projects to post, but no idea how to get them out of my "Cloud", I have technology issues. After having broken the last 2 PC's and more phones than I want to talk about (I Never dropped one! I think I went through 6 in a year and a half with various issues. ) Bare with me as I learn this new system.
     This past year as he always does Gremlin chose a theme "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"  For once I was ecstatic, something I can go to the party store and buy!!!!!!  Yeah No... He didn't like the invites at the store, the decorations were ok but he insisted on a Shredder piñata.  They had Ninja Turtle piñatas at the store but; "No mommy we want to beat up the bad guy." I looked online and at several party stores and only found one Shredder piñata, I hated it!  So by a stroke of luck we had just gotten  new phone books and I got to work. I admit I did draw this out before by hand with lot's of reference pictures of the "New" Shredder.

     I started with the standard balloon, after 2 layers of paper maché, I used a cereal box taped into a tube and notched for the neck. I taped it to the head with masking tape as it stayed stuck better than packing tape with the damp paper.

For his shoulders I connected 2 small balloons with another tube of cereal box cardboard and masking tape.

 Attaching it to the neck with the notches in the cardboard and masking tape.  I then covered the entire armature with a single layer of paper maché on the head and neck and 2 layers on the shoulders and chest.

 As it dried I used scraps of the cereal box to fashion the armor spikes and samurai head piece.  

 I covered them with aluminum ducting tape.

 I forgot to take a picture of his helmet, basicly I covered a balloon halfway with paper maché then after it dried covered it with rows of non shiny grey duct tape to look like a leather samurai helmet.

 I sprayed all but the eye section with black gloss spray paint (only kind I had), painted the eye area with a pale flesh toned acrylic paint.

 I drew his eyes out with pencil the darkened everything with sharpies.

 This is what the cardboard side of a cereal box looks like when sprayed with chrome paint.  It wasn't shiny enough so I tried the printed side and it worked like a charm.

Face mask above and shoulder armor below.  After contemplating spraying the shoulders of the body silver I chose to make another paper maché ball and cut it in half  affixing the shoulder spikes within the layers and then spraying the pieces with the chrome spray paint. 

 I assembled everything with hot glue and here is the final product!  I cut a small hole under the face mask to fill the center bottom with candy, there is also a string that goes through the head to hang it from.

 I was thinking of making a chest plate with duct tape folded in triangles but Gremlin said it was perfect and not to touch it! LOL he had it hanging in his room the last month before his birthday.
Next Wednesday I will post the invitations, and the following Wednesday the treat boxes.
See you next week,
Toodles
Crickitt.