When one of my most darling friends told me that she wanted to have an ice cream social for her birthday, I squeed.  Not in my pants or anything, but you know that happy high-pitched flipper sound that people make when they’re giddy. I just had to insist she let me help with (and by ‘help with’, I mean ‘take complete control of’) the decorations and most of the planning.  Did I mention she’s a real gem for being so cool about that?  Because she is.

Her favorite color is purple and I knew I wanted to incorporate that into the color scheme along with cream and black as accents. I felt that cream and black would help keep the decorations from looking too childish and would help make the party a little more sophisticated. Of course, all of this sounds like I’m talking out of my ass, so take it with a grain of salt.  Or an enema.  Whatever floats your boat.

Here’s an initial sketch of what I wanted the set up to be (yes, I’m a nerd and I can’t draw.  Sue me):

I wanted to make three banners to hang in the window – a large pennant banner, a small pennant banner, and a string of origami flowers. On the table I wanted a white table cloth, pretty ice cream cups, a galvanized tub for the ice cream, and a lay out of toppings in pretty dishes. Of course there would be labels handmade to match the theme because I am an overachiever n’ shit.  Fairly simple, but inviting at the same time. Bonus! I already have most of the serving pieces.  Boo – yah.

Now on to the fun stuff – how I made the decorations:

Pennant Banners

It was fairly simple to make the large and small pennant banners.  I found cardstock in four different shades of purple that rocked my socks. I hand drew the pennant shapes on the cardstock and cut them out with my nifty paper slicer thingy (yeah, it’s kinda janky but it works).  No, I did not go online and download a pennant banner template because I’m dumb.  I thought about it after the fact. Ah, sweet mystery of life, now I have learned the lesson of never creating something from scratch when I can steal it… I mean borrow it… from the nice folks on the internet.

Once the pennants were cut out I just glued them onto white twine and there I had it: two banners.

Here are some bloggy-type pics of the process.

Origami Flowers

I wanted something dynamic and interesting to juxtapose the plain pennant banners.  I had an idea of something flower-like, but I was tired of making the same old tissue paper poms (don’t get me wrong, all hail Martha Stewart and whatever but just not this time).  I had toyed with the idea of origami flowers because I thought it would be easy.  Wow, I’m a total noob. While it wasn’t super hard, it was time consuming.

I got white cardstock and paint splattered cheap black paint onto it.  That was fun.  And messy.  I think I like getting into things that are fun and messy.

Once the paper was dry I made the flowers. I used this site to figure out how to do the folding.

Here are some pics of that jazz.

 Ice Cream Cups

Since I wanted everything to fit with the color scheme, there was no way I was going to use this for the ice cream cups. Not this overachieving nerdface. I mean, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.  So I covered them.

Here’s a montage (aww, yeah) of the process.

Next post: what the actual party looked like.

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