DIY Monday: JOE's Doc McStuffins birthday party

Like I said in my last post, JOE asked for a Doc McStuffins party. I wanted to do things that weren't going to be too time consuming but at the same time still reflected the theme she wanted. 
The DIY items I took on had to be inexpensive (afterall that's the reason you DIY), not too time consuming (I exclusively pump for JAE so my time is limited) and FUN!

Again, I went to Pinterest to get some ideas for the party and I found some pretty good ones.

The first item I did was the picture frame. The idea was that guests would take a picture with the celebrant (JOE) and I'd include them in the thank you notes I send out. 

All you need are a colored foam board, a book of Doc McStuffins stickers, a pen knife, a ruler, a pen or pencil and some foam letters with stickies.

First I marked off how big I wanted the frame to be and then I cut it out.

Then I added the stickers and did the writing using glitter glue.

Then I added the foam letters on top of the glitter glue to make sure it will stay.

Total cost for all the materials (I already had the glitter glue and stickers at home) came up to about $10. Unfortunately, I forgot to let guests know about this so it ended up sitting on the floor and didn't really get used.

 

Using the leftover board from the cutout, I made the food signs.

All I did was cut up part of the foam board and then applied Doc stickers to the 4 corners of each board leaving enough space for writing. Then I used Microsoft Word to print out the food signs in purple and tape to take it on there. A 15-minute task and it cost nothing extra.

 

Up next were the band-aids. These were easy and took about an hour. I used sugar wafers, decorating gel and sugar hearts. Total cost including taxes for all the materials here was just under $8. Wafers was $1.19, gel was $2.99, hearts was $2.59.Note: You will have to put the finished product in the fridge for at least an hour to give the gel time to harden up. 

For some of my other handmade items, please visit AyoBE Boutique to get something beautiful for you or someone you know. 

Up next was the sign for the door. I got this idea off a picture I had seen online. I had a picture of JOE lying around and figured it would work great for what I was trying to do. 
JOE painted the sheet with yellow crayon and I drew everything else. This was a fun joint project that took MAYBE 10-minutes to complete. All you need are popsicle sticks, a heavy card stock for the pack, matching ribbon (I used leftover ribbon from JOE's Christmas outfit last year), paper glue, crayons and permanent marker and a picture of the celebrant of course :-). Since I already had all the items at home, this didn't cost me anything additional to make.

For the dessert table, I wanted to put up a bigger sign. I didn't want to spend too much money on it so I stopped by the dollar store on my way home from work one evening and got a $1 frame. I spray painted it pink. Then using Microsoft word, I did the letters in purple. Pink and Purple are Doc's favorite colors afterall. Total cost for this one was $1.06 including taxes. Total time was perhaps 10 minutes. It really doesn't take long.  

  

 
On to the thermometers. This was another simple DIY project. I got pretzel rods, melting chocolate, used the leftover sugar hearts from the band-aids and decorating gel.

I used this spatula to fully coat the pretzels. 

First melt the chocolate and then dip each stick in there about 3/4 of the way. 

Let it dry (takes about 5-minutes). Then use the writing gel to draw length-wise along the pretzel rods. Then attache the heart at the top. 

Then arrange all the pretzels close together and use the writing gel to make lines across. Let it sit in the fridge for about an hour and serve. These are DELISH! A mix of sweet and salty. Definitely can't go wrong with that. 
The pretzels cost $5.99, the melting chocolate cost $2.19 and the gel cost $2.99 (I needed 2 tubes total for the pretzels and the wafers). Total cost was about $12. This task took about an hour to complete.

Overall, I love the way everything turned out and JOE was very happy with her party. 

Have you ever done a themed party for any of your kids? If so, what was the theme? Did you do a lot of DIY items?