Chloe has been begging for a "Princess Jasmine" party since she was 2, and there was no convincing her otherwise as her big day drew close (especially since she has quite literally been waiting half her life!). Initially i couldnt find much inspiration online for "Aladdin" style party ideas but now that its happened, all I can say is WOW!!! This was one fun theme, dont change your mind if youre considering it!
We started off with the invitation-
When the big day arrived, we had implemented some lovely ideas. Firstly there was an indoor gazebo area which we draped and decorated with the kids colour-ins. Underneath and around were a bunch of activities such as Sand Art, Jewellery making, cupcake decorating and face painting
The Sand Art was very fitting for the theme, and certainly the biggest hit of the day - most kids absolutely love it and i will use the pack again for a party soon. I prestuck all trays to the table to avoid too much mess and colour mixing, but i must say there wasn't much actually!
Then for the jewellery making table, the kids just covered toilet rolls in ribbon and jewels, they actually came out really well, these examples below were made by kids aged 4!
Once again we used the BlockPoster website to make giant colouring ins and the kids had a ball painting and using bright gel crayons on them. The beauty of these enormous prints is that even at Chloes age, its easy for her to stay in the lines, and you can cover sections you dont want them to paint on and cut out the smudges. We ended up making 3, after lots of begging for more!
Heres the biggest of all
The cake wasn't what i had planned but it came out just fine and with not too much work involved! The Castle at the top was made of Rice Crispie treats that i moulded into turrets and put coloured fondant on. The clouds are just blue candy floss. The gold stars and genie lamp were made from fondant and painted with a metallic edible paint :)
I had all good intentions of putting dry ice in the genie lamp before candles were blown (even had a little straw to allow smoke out the funnel) but I decided it was a little extravagant for a 3 year old.. will save the idea for another day!
Inside i stuck with the party theme colours in the madeira cake layers
We also had cupcakes, I couldnt resist buying some cute upright Jasmine rice paper cutouts and making the cupcakes into ball gown skirts (note these must be made of thicker rice paper, with tab cutouts that submerge in the icing, else they won't stand). The jasmine rice paper butterflies also came out nicely and were just printed on the standard thickness rice paper.
I managed to find this antique lamp for a steal on eBay and its been used almost daily by my little Princess Jasmine to summon her Genie. So a word of warning- dont pay for the expensive toy ones, get the real thing!
The block letters CHLOE were bought in polystyrene and were painted by the girls. It was another great way to get them involved in the party plans (and these have been kept for next year - to be repainted according to the whatever the theme may be!)
The next thing begging for attention in this theme is a "Magic Carpet Ride"! We emptied out the
garage, blacked out the window, put glow sticks/glow jars/glow bottles and glow balloons inside and turned it into an actual Magic Carpet ride room. The magic carpet itself was simply made by throwing a persian rug over my father-in-laws car creeper trolley, and tying a rope to one side.
We played the "Whole New World" music and took a handful of kids on each ride in the pitch dark - which had them squealing with delight - the garage sounded like an amusement park ride in fact :)
Now Chloe is one lucky girl, because she has a beautiful rather exotic-looking, belly dancing cousin Claudia who offered to come and pretend to be the real Princess Jasmine. She had the girls enthralled!
Moving onto face-painting, I did it myself and I am no pro! I just had one split cake on offer and sticky silver jewels. The face paint cake was made of Snazaroo's white-blue-lilac-hot pink. And i used it as follows-
Firstly i was able to make "Jasmine Crowns" like this one using 2 sponges on either side of the cake...
And then using 1 stroke, Jasmine butterflies like this ...
I even had a request for a "Jasmine Monkey" as you can see by this little cheeky one!
And nobody asked for anything else so face-painting was done really quickly and easily :)
Lastly for the party pack loot bags we couldnt resist doing what we did for Katies princess party ... laminated prince/princess bodices stuck on coloured paper bags.
Now im not one to spoil and over spend .. so inside the party packs we kept it minimal with Aladdin colouring in sheets, 1 or 2 sweets, Jasmine & other flower seeds to plant and Jasmine hair bows (made with tiny iron on transfers applied to normal hair ribbons with a hair straightening iron!)
Here are the pics
All in all, a great theme, and i didnt even get to do half the ideas i had. I would love to do it again one day :)
