Carnival Party

I hosted a little carnival party a few weeks ago and am finally posting about it. I had all these intensions of making cute carnival decorations and booths and the whole nine yards. But, it’s summer, and ours has been so jam packed with fun that there was no way all that was going to get done.

I stopped by Zurchers and picked up a few rolls of tickets for around $3 per roll. Can you say cheapest party decorations ever?! I didn’t plan on using them in so many fun ways, but the more I played around, the more the ideas just started flowing.

This invitation was pretty colorful and I wanted it to show, so I slipped it in a glassine bag and stapled a few tickets to the outside to embellish it a little. I loved the look but wanted to try to make something more dimensional, and that is when I came up with these cute bows. 

I went crazy and made a bunch in every color. I ended up putting the ticket bows on the invitations for the girls, and the strips of tickets on the invites for the boys.

I carried the bows through to the party favor bags for the girls. I wrapped a long strip of tickets around the bags and stapled them on for the boys. I love the simplicity of these and they looked even cuter when filled with all their colorful prizes from all the games.

One of the games at the carnival was potato sack races. I hadn’t done those in the longest time and the kids LOVED them. That game was a hit. We did several rounds of races to determine our first, second and third place winners. The kids loved the ribbons too! Sometimes I get carried away making things and think they really don’t matter for the party, but I love to create so I make them anyway. It’s always fun when the little kids notice and appreciate the small things like these ribbons. They thought it was really cool they were made out of tickets and everyone had to check them out.

I made a photo backdrop out of tickets like the one I saw from Brittany Jepsen. It was so easy, but did take a bit of time. I also made a chain out of tickets to act as bunting around the game tables. I forgot to get a picture of it, and this was the best I could find. Oops! I used a ton of tickets on the backdrop and decorations, yet still had almost half a roll of each color left. Best. Purchase. Ever.
I had to throw this picture of my little baby sneaking a duck. She has learned to walk and climb and has become quite the little trouble-maker. She is lucky she’s so cute. Anyway, back to the party decorations…

I stapled strips of tickets to these white lunch sacks and filled them with Dum Dum suckers in the bottom to give them some weight so they wouldn’t tip over. Then I filled the rest with popcorn. It was such a yummy treat the kids were delighted to enjoy.

These rolls of tickets were so colorful, cheap and adorable that I now want to use them on everything! I hope you have been inspired to take a step back sometimes and make hosting parties a little simpler with easy ideas like the ones I’ve shared today.