DIY Birthday Party Garlands

Cam's 6th (SIXTH!!) birthday is almost upon us and although we are sticking with our trend of keeping parties more on the simple side of things, I can't help but oogle at all the fabulous DIY celebratory decor popping around out there. Garlands are one of my most favorite ways to decorate for a party and I always find a great way to reuse them afterwards. I don't even need to make garlands for Cam this year, but if I did, I'd have a hard time picking from this set! Some require more DIY than others (one is even just a DIY arrangement, really), but I love them all.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12

p.s. I also love these simple and free printable party banners, which would be super easy to jazz up!

My Funny Valentine: Marker Tie Dyed Heart Garland

We came across these cute tie dyed coffee filter hearts and wanted to give them a try -- we have a TON of coffee filters left over from our spray painting (and our coffee maker doesn't use filters.  and, who are we kidding, mom uses Starbucks, not our coffee maker).  I'm not quite at the scissors stage and Kane is learning, but not quite at the "cut a heart out of this" stage.  So instead we used our Do A Dot markers to "tie dye" the filters and then mom used her heart punch to cut out hearts after they dried.  We had a hard time pressing hard enough to get a good tie dyed effect.  To help, mom stacked several filters together and then soaked them in water. We then dotted the stack with our markers and the water helped spread the color out over the filter and down through the layers.  And you know we couldn't resist using our glitter pens on the top filter.  Mom then taped the hearts to some baker's twine and hung up the garland.  It turned out to stretch almost the entire length of our main room and we love that it's not just pink, red and purple (we've got plenty of other Valentine's crafts going with that color scheme, too!).