Kellz Creations: MLP Rainbow Dash birthday party on a budget

Today I want to share with you how I made my daughter’s My Little Pony themed birthday party on a very tight budget. I am a crafter at heart so immediately my mind went to a place where it believed I could make EVERYTHING I needed for this party. And with a partner (my sister) I pulled it off quite well I think, with dollar store items mostly! My daughter’s favorite pony is Rainbow Dash so I focused more on a theme based mostly on her.

First of all, like any good party planner these days, I got on Pinterest and started searching for My Little Pony themed party ideas. Lucky for me (and you) there were a TON. I started saving pictures and stealing ideas. I decided that tissue paper, balloons and construction paper were all I really needed to decorate. I made some tissue paper balls following this tutorial and used seven different colored layers to create rainbow ones. My sister made a Happy Birthday banner and used the Equestria font to fit our theme. I threw a blue table cloth on a round table and hung strips of different colored tissue paper ( the same I used for the paper balls) coming down around it. I got a MLP table cloth from Party City for the larger table.

This was our whole set up

Here's a closer shot. just look at that banner. So cute.

I got to work making the party favors for the children. I made them using construction paper of different colors and followed this tutorial. We bought a package of My Little Pony party favors from Party City. It was $10 and came with 48 pieces (enough for eight kids). Here’s how they turned out:

I made eight of these in different colors. they are filled with MLP favors and one lollipop

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, my sister made the piñata I bought a package of candy from Walmart to fill it, but I didn’t get a good picture of it completed before the children destroyed it. Here’s what it looked like after the kids hit it a few times then I remembered I needed a picture:

That's the birthday girl after a few swings to the Rainbow Dash pinata.

It really was quite adorable. As you can see, it was Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark and the white balloons were made to look like the clouds above the rainbow lightning bolt.

I ended up making the game as well because I could only find a “pin the tail” game that was MLP themed using Pinky Pie, which was ok, but obviously I wanted Rainbow Dash. There were a few Esty shops that sold a digital file of a Rainbow Dash pin the cutie mark but me being me said to myself : “ummmmm I can make that.” I bought a poster size paper from the dollor store, and drew Rainbow Dash myself. I can assure you I am no professional artist. I was looking at a google image of her the whole time and just did the best I could. It came out better than I could have thought. I started with pencil, traced it with marker and colored her in (her body is painted mixing blue and white acrylic paint because I did not have a light enough blue in markers). Here’s how she turned out:

Pin the Cutie Mark on Rainbow Dash game

The birthday girl

The cutie marks I drew also on cardstock and used good old fashioned double sided tape when it came time to play the game. I was very proud of this drawing and my daughter didn’t want to throw it out so it’s hanging up in her room like a poster now J

The most money was spent on the food of course. I wanted to keep the food to fit the theme so my husband helped me and we came up with using the actual menu from the Ponyville Café. (with some small changes, I wasn’t going to feed my guests hay!) So one thing on the Pony’s menu is Daffodil and daisy sandwiches. I made Nutella and strawberry jam sandwiches and bought a large flower shaped cookie cutter. I cut the sandwiches in this shape and these were for the children. For the adults we ordered a few of the party trays of sandwich rolls from the Albertson’s deli. These were our “HLT (hay lettuce tomato) sandwiches from the Pony menu. The last pony menu item was the “Hay fries” I bought a couple bags of Veggie Straws and put them in a bowl. Simple enough and it looked just like hay fries. My mother also made some pasta salad for a side. We had an early afternoon party so with these relatively simple finger foods, it was perfect.

The "HLT" sandwiches

"Hay fries" aka veggie straws.

Sorry I didn't take a better picture of the daffodil and daisy sandwiches.

For dessert, like I mentioned in my earlier post, my mom is the cake queen. Well she made cupcakes. I got the idea from none other than Pinterest and all I had to do was send her a picture, and she recreated them and they were adorable. She also made a small smash cake for my daughter and bought some ponies from Walmart to put on it. I bought a candy mold from amazon in the shape of a lightning bold (Wonderbolt) and some yellow candy melts as well as sticks. The “Wonderbolt pops” and “Loyalty Lollipops”(from .99 store) were a big hit. Cotton candy bags which I labeled “cotton candy clouds” were also on our dessert table, and that did it for the food. The refreshing raindrop punch was Hawaiian punch (the blue one, whatever flavor that is I can’t remember now).