Art Party For Any Age Group

Looking for a birthday party theme for the kid in your life? How about working around the the theme of art? Not only does this theme work for many age categories, it also can provide lots of activities to keep the kids occupied.

Start by sending invitations with words like, " you are specially invited to the unveiling of Ella's 4th birthday..." There are some great invitations on sendomatic.com. I especially like the one called "rainbow". It is not specific to birthday, but with all of the creative options on this website for invitations, you can take this invitation and really cater it to work for the art theme. Be sure to include in your invitation, a request that the children wear clothes that can get "dirty". You don't want an upset parent when she sees purple paint on the party dress...

The ideas for a party theme like this are endless, so I will just highlight a few to get you started. For toddlers or younger children, it's easier to keep it simple. Use artist's tools such as non-toxic paints or crayons. If you provide the paper, young children will play Picasso. But take it a step further and provide inexpensive frames for your artists to display and share with their parents when they get home. For older children, say 5 and up, buy some inexpensive T-shirts and provide fabric paint for everyone to make their own shirt. This is a great take home gift. For the older kids, provide a beading station where the kids can make necklaces or bracelets out of beautiful beads. The craft stores have endless, pre-packaged supplies for this type of activity and surprisingly, some boys will enjoy this activity too. Be sure to provide cool beads like surf boards or sharks teeth for the boys. They can make cool necklaces with boy like charms.

Try hiring a sketch artist or face painter for your party. This will also provide entertainment for the kids. Each kid can take home a small cartoon of themselves with the birthday girl or birthday boy. You can take pictures of each child after their face has been painted and then create a collage for your child to hang in their room

For the eating area, spread the table with butcher paper and place tins with crayons or writing utensils which are age appropriate. Encourage everyone to doodle while they eat. It's fun to see what everyone has come up with and at the end of the party, the birthday girl or boy can hang the banner like art in their room to remember their party.
Food should be easy for this theme. Go Italian, after all, Italy is where a lot of our most famous artist have come from, so celebrate them and eat pizza! For dessert either buy or bake cupcakes but request that the baker leave the frosting off. You can whip up a batch of frosting yourself or ask the baker to provide some separately. Either way, choose a few different colors of frosting and purchase a few tubes of cake decorations and various sprinkles. Let the guest decorate their own cupcakes. See, I just added another activity to the party.

Decorations should be easy for this theme too. Start off by having your birthday girl or boy create a few "masterpieces" on large pieces of butcher paper. Place the art of the same size foam core or thick backed paper to give the piece some rigidity. Stop by the art store and pick up a few easels to display the artwork. Don't forget to have your child sign their piece for authenticity...

What I love about this party theme is that it can work for many ages and it provides a lot of options for activities. In addition, rather than sending each child home with plastic trinkets that will get thrown out the next day, each person has nice mementos from your child's birthday. You can really get creative with a theme like this. Have fun!