A warm welcome from Craft Christini

Years ago I began this blog, CraftTini, because 
I LOVE to craft & my family calls me Tini. 
The drafts sat dormant on the homepage waiting for release. 
Now, another baby later, I am again attempting to get my ideas onto the screen for you. 


My husband says I glow when creating, party decorating, playing with my kids and being near the ocean. He along with these passions are truly my world. My girls and I make many creations and enjoy laughing and sharing our ideas together. Children enjoy making anything to spend time with people they love.


Handmade is always beautiful in the eye of beholder. 
I have had to learn that accepting all art creations is perfection.
You will find imperfections in my posts. I could and have spent all day proofing, retyping and reworking a post. I must let my OCD for perfection go to type all my ideas out and still have time for my family. 
I hope you find these ideas helpful for your crafting, creating and family time. Enjoy and laugh with or at me, I sure do.  

So, here we go,

Christini

Minnie's Bow-tique sign - made simple

Welcome guests to your Minnie Bow-tique party with 

a cute homemade version of 

Minnie's Bow-tique door sign.

Make this simple sign for your Minnie party 

or 

use idea for a party kid craftivity.

Supplies:

Minnie's head - coloring page from coloring book.info is perfect.

1 pink and 1 white sheet of foam or paper ,

6 - 12 ins of ribbon for hanging

Elmer's glue stick (best glue for gluing foam)



Directions:
Color and cut out Minnie's head from coloring page.
Cut pink foam into a square
Cut 4 white (or any color)1 inch strips to border pink square
Glue Minnie's head onto the center of pink square
Glue white strips around the edge of pink square
Glue ribbon onto the back to hang

CUTE & SO EASY!

Cut hearts from remaining pink foam 

Put on door knob or in center door window

Just like at Minnie's Bow-tique

Goody Bags to Match Minnie Mouse's Dress

Minnie Bow-tique party planning?

Make treat bags to compliment 
Minnie's polka dot dress

Craft before the Party 

OR 
Ask guests make this easy craft 
for all their goodies

Supplies:

• Red* Lunch Sacks  
• White paper - cut into circles
• Glue Stick
• Ribbon for handles

Directions:

Cut circles* from white paper

      10-16 per bag

Tape Ribbon on for Handles

Glue on the Dots

Write Guests names on bag

We had SO much fun making these bags!

*Pink or any color lunch sack could be used 

* Use white sticker dots in place of paper circles  

DIY: Make "Minnie Eared Dress" Birthday Party Invitations

For a fun family made invitation
 Add Disney Family.com's 
free printable fill-in 
Minnie Mouse Bow-tique party invitation 

to "Lilly's 'Bow Eared Red Dress" 

to compliment Minnie's classic polka dot dress.

Does your little girl love Minnie in pink bow & dress? 

Minnie's dress is Pink in 
Minnie's Bowtoons and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. 
The Disney invites are pink when printed in color.

Easily change invite dress to pink 

for a pink themed Minnie Bow-tique Party.

Making party invitations is a fun way to spend time with your birthday kid, are a cute way to spread the word and get guests excited about your upcoming birthday party. 

Our 1st draft 

Invitees will enjoy finding this Minnie Mouse inspired party announcement in their envelope 
Guests will display this invite and you will smile seeing it on the wall at Grandma's house. 



Created by Mommy and Lilly for our family, friends and now,you, 
these Minnie Mouse Bow Eared Red Dress Party Invitations are so simple and fun to create. 

You can make 8 of these unique invites with your birthday girl in 2 hours for $3.

Supplies:
8 Minnie Bow-tique Party Invitations 

FREE from DisneyFamily.com 

1 sheet - Red Poster Board

1 sheet - Black Poster Board

Ribbon - 11 in per invite

             1 big bow = 10 ft & only $.50!

glue stick
scissors - regular & scallop

White or silver crayon

small plastic cup for tracing ear 3in circle
5x7 envelopes 

Little hands can help do many of these steps.

For ears:
Use crayon to trace small end of cup on black cardboard 
Cut 2 circles for each invite.


For Dress:
Cut a 5x7 red cardboard per invite
Trim into a dress shape, much like a triangle with 3 -4 in top.
Curve the bottom of dress with scallop scissors or 
by trimming scallop pattern in up down motion ( think small hills)

For Little Bow:

Remove staple from bow back,save sticker for future projects

Undo the bow for 10 ft of ribbon 

Trim 6-9 inches of ribbon for each invitation

Tie piece of ribbon into a bow

For Disney Family printable Invitations:
8 invitations is 2 sheets of the invite
Print in color for Pink or Black/White for coloring red
Cut into 4 separate invites

Trim "You are invited to" from top
This will go on top between the ears, above the bow and Birthday girls name

Put invitation parts together

Set on envelope to be sure ears will fit

Adjust ears or cut smaller before gluing.

Glue all the pieces together.

This is when we thought how cute and easy  adding a dress underskirt would be

To add frilly underskirt:

Glue a piece of white paper, lace, fabric, tulle or anything pretty onto bottom of dress. 

Trim to 1 or 2 inches

Finished "Eared Minnie Dress" invitation 

should fit perfectly into envelope. 

Writing name and address for
guests and birthday girl is a great way to help children learn family and friends full names and addresses, to learn their own address and excellent preparation for sending thank you notes. 


Kids love getting and sending the mail.
Hand delivering to the person who will probably drive little guests to the party?
Add a fun sticker for stamp and remind adult 
to let little invitee open the envelope.

Enjoy creating and party planning with your birthday girl. It is her special day, enjoy your time together, let her know she is wonderful and 
have FUN!

I would love to see your retake 
of Lilly's "Eared Minnie Dress" invitations. 

Please post your pictures and comments.

Happy Crafting, 

Tini


PS - Need Lilly & Me to make these invitations for your party or 
do you need the supplies all ready for assembly? 
Convo me - let's help you make it! 

DIY Minnie's Bow-tique Birthday Party Supply & Decoration

YES, you can make Minnie Bow-tique birthday party supplies and decorations

After watching the Party City "party idea videos", my sweet Lilly wished her 4th birthday to be:
A Minnie party with a red Minnie costume to match her newly acquired Minnie ears.

She also wants her Minnie birthday party to have:
A PINATA  (most important), pass the present & more games, crafts & fun things to do, friends, presents, Minnie balloons, decorations and a Minnie birthday cake.

We began Minnie party planning together with online research and brain storming.

We found out Minnie has her very own cartoon now "Minnie's Bowtoons" and decided Minnie's Bow-tique along with a Lilly's Minnie Mouse Clubhouse would be our party theme for decorations and fun.

 

Disney Jr.'s free invite

First we needed a Minnie invitation.

Invitations made by Mommy & Lilly

This cute FREE printable Minnie Bow-tique Party invitation came straight from DisneyFamily.com.

We printed Minnie's Bow-tique invite and got to work creating paper invites. We glued Minnie's invite to red paper, colored dots, added ears and a paper bow. So cute but I wanted something more.

   
We had even more fun crafting our final batch of  "Minnie Eared Dress"  invitations: Minnie's red dress with ears and ribbon bow. 

These invitations were so simple to make 

and cost $3 including the 5x7 envelopes.

Click here for complete instructions. 

Party invitations complete and  Lilly's 4th Birthday Bow-tique Clubhouse Party preparations in full effect.

Toodles Handmade by me, Craft Tini

The Pinata - O'Toodles pull-string

Lilly wanted a pull string pinata just like in the Party City video. We got the balloons tied together and our paper, flour & water together for paper mache-ing a Minnie head. Paper Mache with 2 kids seemed like so much work and time so I looked for other options and found this DIY pinata made by Kalleen At Second Street. 

I got to crafting our pinata reusing 2 USPS boxes, red cardboard, foam sheets, tissue paper, Ribbon (same used on invites, gift bags,etc) packing tape and Elmer's glue.

When the shell of our Minnie pinata was complete we took a long look and decided Minnie could be TOODLES from

Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse in "Lilly's Minnie Clubhouse"

Please visit MaddLilly my Etsy store to purchase a "Toodles" like Lilly's or follow Kalleen's instructions above to create a special Toodles for your clubhouse.

*(4/07/14 - Many apologies to my Toodles fans who want this pinata, I am so busy with work and my family that there is no Toodles time in my day. There are 2 other sellers who have recreated Lilly's Toodles and have it for sale on etsy SuperCraftyMom and BRENDASpinatas . Please feel free to contact me at MaddLilly, atleast a month before your party, I do have a very hard time saying no to special requests, and please PIN Lilly's Toodles to your Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Party Pinterest board, I LOVE to see the count go up {660 today:-)})* 

Red with Polka Dot Goody Bags to match Minnie's Dress

DIY Minnie Treat Bags

Treat bags are a must for every party, especially when there is Pinata candy and prizes involved.

Simple to make and so cute to give.
We created these polka dot bags for under $2 using red lunch sacks, ribbon used in invites

and white dots cut from plain paper,

Of course, after cutting & gluing the white dots,  I found white sticker dots and thought "What a GREAT party craftivity this would have been" (next time :0) Click here for how to

Minnie Ears 

Our DIY Minnie Ears

Lilly wanted her guests to have and wear Minnie ears just like hers.

We found this great how to make Minnie  ears by the suburban mom. 

I changed it up just a little to suit our on hand supplies and all 8 pairs came out so CUTE.

My Mom is so sweet, "These look better than the ones at Disney, good job Tini". Thanks Mom :)

Minnie Ear Supplies with Inspiration Ears

Let's Decorate : ReCreate Minnie's Bow-tique 

To get decorating ideas we watched all the Minnie Bowtoon episodes available on Disney Jr.

I replayed the "Welcome to my new Bow-tique"  intro to see Minnie's Bow-tique layout so many times I was humming it in my sleep.

To recreate Minnie's Bow-tique in our living room we need:

Minnie & Daisy

Minnie's front door sign

For front window: Blue pots with bows on pink vertical rods & orange polka dot curtains

Orange W/ yellow polka dot table cover

Pink walls

A blue cuckoo clock for Minnie's bird "Cuckoo Loca" Our cats name is Loca :)

A heart shaped mirror

A small round mirror with Minnie ears sitting on a white dresser with heart knobs,

Heart shaped Swing doors in doorway,

A table for creating bows

Orange and yellow Daisy flowers

Bows, bows and MORE bows.

That's a LOT of needed things 

We did get MANY of the items and it all came together on party day:

Our stuffed Minnie & Daisy from Disney World sat so pretty on top of bow shelf.

Minnie's front door sign was made so easy with a coloring sheet, foam & ribbon and

would make be a GREAT take home party craftivity.

We painted little flower pots blue for the 3 blue pots of bows for front windows* , painted paper towel cardboard pink and glued foam bows to it... came out cute!

To craft a blue pots of bows **

paint little flower pots blue,

paint pink 3 paper towel card board rolls OR wrapping paper roll

glue 4 foam bows evenly apart onto the roll

plant roll into pot

*Our 1 finished pot of bows ended up in Lilly's clubhouse on her candy table

We found Orange w/ white white fabric for $1 at a yard sale for bow-tique curtains & table cover.

Pink walls were achieved 3 ways:

                                      Glue sheets of pink tissue together then tape up onto wall

                                      Make a streamer backdrop from pink crepe paper

                                      Use curtains, ours were pink & white stripes

Heart Shaped Mirror was hard to come by so we:

Cut a BIG heart from 2 poster boards and taped to a BIG mirror

Small round mirror with ears & bow was crafted very easy - thank you Justyce for your mirror. 

     Tape two ears, use headband ear pattern, onto a round mirror and add a Minnie bow 

.

 

Orange & Yellow Daisy flowers came from the craft store and fit nicely into blue flower pots. 

We cut bows**, LOTS of bows, from colored foam sheets to look cartoon-y

Foam bows stacked on shelves -  I put a white cover over our bookcase and taped foam bows onto cover in a pyramid style to resemble Minnie's corner bow display.

Happy 4th Birthday Lilly!