Welcome back! Did anyone have a chance to check out Pinterest yesterday? Joining is by invitation only, and I do have invites available, so if you're too impatient to wait until they send you one, let me know!
Who else uses their scrapbooking supplies for stuff other than scrapbooking? There are so many general paper crafts that scrapbooking supplies can be used for, that it's easy for us to expand to other kinds of crafting. I never buy birthday cards anymore, and now my husband uses me as his greeting card store! There is so much more we can do with our supplies too, and party related stuff is one of them.
Invitations
So far Kieran has only had small parties and we've invited by word of mouth (though I did have a few ideas bookmarked this year), so I asked the rest of the team to share some of their ideas.
Celeste used digital supplies to make this invitation for her son's camp out party.

Donna also used digital supplies but mixed hers with paper for a hybrid invite.

Supplies: A-Z Alphabet Stickers and Rub-Ons and the Alphabet Flashcards from Crystal Wilkerson; font: Nasalization which can be downloaded for free at dafont.com
Monika went paper only for her daughter's Luau themed party
and I loved this idea of using a photo for her son's 18th birthday invite.
Here's another all digital idea from Marnie, made with Libby Weifenbach designs from Sweet Shoppe.
Gift Wrapping and Party Decor
Last year I used pinwheels as the major theme for Kieran's birthday and party. I used double sided patterned paper to make pinwheel accents for his gifts.

I found a simple tutorial online for making the pinwheels.
A couple years ago I used my stamps and upcycled some paper to wrap this gift for a friend's son

You can also get really creative with gifts for grownups.

As far as decor goes the sky's the limit! You can make toppers for cakes and cupcakes like Paula did.

She used her die cutting machine to make the stars and butterflies for her daughter's 7th birthday last year. And this year she used hybrid techniques to make her a rock star cake!
You can see a tutorial showing how she did it here.
Last year I used my Slice machine to cut out the letters spelling Happy Birthday to decorate not the cupcakes, but the cupcake stand.

Marnie made personalised decor for her daughter Poppy.

Marnie says : "I cut out some circles with my circle cutter from Imaginisce princess paper. then stamped on Poppy's name with my Pebbles foam letter stamps".
This year to go with the theme Up I painted a wooden house and used dimensional letter stickers to spell out Kieran's name and add the number 2.

I designed the Paradise Falls sign in Photoshop and printed it out onto photo paper.
Here are some links to other cute decor ideas I found. I didn't have time for everything this year but I am keeping them in mind for the future!
Hot air balloon bunting
Balloon Cones
Hot air balloon mobile
Gift Wrap
Candy Bunting
Party hats and Goodie Bags
You can't have a birthday party without party hats right? No need to go buy them, one sheet of 12x12 paper can make two hats! Simply cut out a 12" circle from the sheet, cut the circle in two, and form each one into a cone. Decorate add a string to tie (or elastic) and there you go! You can see a full tutorial here on Martha Stewart
Here is last year's version (sitting on top the goodie buckets)

I added pinwheels and a fringed circle with a rub-on accent.
This year they were a tad more colourful.

Back to the goodie buckets: I used puffy stickers to put the initials of each of the little guests
Yesterday I gave you a peek of some other goodie bags from last year. These were actually the ones for the adults

I thought it would be fun for the grownups to have some goodies as well! I used a stack of lunch bags (which I had in my stash from making paper bag albums back in the day) and topped them with a pinwheel.
What about inside the goodie bags? This year our goodie bags were fabric totes, but inside I included these Adventure Books.

The covers are actually chipboard pages from a blank 7 Gypsies mini book, and the pages are cut from cardstock. I covered the front with map themed patterned paper, and the label was done in Photoshop using digital patterned paper.
Marnie used her stash of scrapbooking buttons to make these headbands to go in goodie bags.
I did a quick search on Pinterest and came up with these other ideas:
Monster goodie bags
More pinwheel bags
Disney bags
Butterfly bags
Lego bags
Phew! That should be enough to keep you busy!
Come back tomorrow when we'll talk about the heart and soul of scrapbooking birthdays: the traditions and photographs. Until then!