Bubble Guppies DIY Party Decor

I love planning and decorating kids parties! I think the things you can DIY for them turn out soooo much better than almost anything you can buy! Today, I wanted to share some of the decorations I made for my niece's birthday party coming up this weekend. I love how they turned out and I spent maybe only $10??? Most of the materials I already had on hand and my printer came in extra handy too!

This centerpiece couldn't have been easier or more fun to create! I just printed out the Bubble Guppies characters that I Googled and taped them to popsicle sticks/dowels. Since I only had one tiny piece of floral foam left, I stuck a bunch of yarn balls into the galvanized bucket (leftover from 2 Easters ago) and stuck all my sticks into them. Worked out great! 

Then I layered some teal-colored tulle on top of the yarn to hide them and added shells that the kids and I had foraged on Sanibel Island a couple years ago. The star fish is from a tourist shop on the island.  

I used PicMonkey to make a card of my niece's adorable face and the little birthday sign. I printed it, cut each one out separately and taped them to popsicle sticks and that was it! This stuff is so easy, I wonder why some people bother to spend money buying it???

Then I did the same for some of the Bubble Guppies characters and they got their own decorated cans so they could be placed randomly on the food table. Are you impressed with my little pink seahorse? =)

I placed a roll of bakers twine into each can (they fit perfectly!) and the hole helps hold up each character. Pretty nifty, huh? See- I really didn't have to buy much to make these! I simply used what I had on hand already. 

Super cute- I really love how the table decor turned out!

And check out this cool backdrop I created for the dessert/food table! I used a blue crinkle chiffon fabric from my stash as the curtain and then attached some bubbly circles and seaweed to make it more underwatery. Then I simply taped some printed characters to it and I've got a simple, theme-appropriate backdrop for our party.

And these rolls of fluffy-wrapped floral wire is all I really had to buy! They were only 99 cents each on clearance at Michael's so I bought enough to decorate the food tent to make it look like an underwater grotto or sea cavern or whatever you wanna call it. You totally get what I mean though, right?

What's a party without a photo prop??? Not much of a party, I think! Haha- this one is still in-progress but I just wanted to share how cool it's turning out so far. I used my circle cutter thingy to cut out the "scales" and simply layered them over each other to create the fish tails. I really like the ombre effect on the boy! On the girl mermaid, I placed the patterned circles randomly throughout to make for a shimmering scale effect. Super pretty, I think!

Next week, I'll post a few pics from the party so you can see how the party decor turned out. We'll be at an actual beach so it should be super fun! Stay tuned and have a lovely weekend everyone!