A Little Mermaid 6th Birthday

My daughter was born just a few weeks after Christmas. It has always been a challenge getting her birthday all ready and special for her. In the past, I got lucky using many Christmas decorations we already had up for her Frozen 4th, and even last year… using a lot of Christmas lights and lanterns for her Tangled 5th. But this year, little miss no nonsense wanted an Ariel birthday.

I scoured what we already had… Christmas ornaments and ribbon, tissue paper, plastic tablecloths leftover from past parties, shells from our vacation at Siesta Key once upon a time, and this is what I came up with for her party decor.

Decorations:

Clear Christmas ornaments strung up with fishing line became bubbles and glitter Christmas ornaments glued to paper plates became oysters with pearls.

Our abundance of leftover tissue paper which was predominantly dark green, worked out wonderfully to create these sea turtle suncatchers.

I cut out large sea turtles from black posterboard and made some rough cutouts of hexagons from the turtles’ backs, adhered leftover clear packing tape to one side, then invited my kids to randomly stick on square pieces of leftover tissue paper. The two turtles pictured above were created by the birthday girl. We hung them up all over our windows with more clear packing tape and they helped to add a splash of color as well as create that underwater world feel.

Green Christmas burlap ribbon and green ornament hooks were used to make hanging seaweed. I just used the ornament hooks as wires to twist and pinch the garland at random intervals. Simple cutouts of starfish were made out of glitter cardstock and stuck to the wall with painter’s tape. More coral was roughly cut out of colorful posterboard. White balloons were hung to the wall to create additional bubbles. Finally paper flowers that I had made years ago for my daughter were hung on the ceiling with tentacles (cut out of white trash bags) to create jellyfish. I found this wonderful tutorial on Cupcakes and Cutlery to help me create the ruffled tentacles.

I hung three light blue plastic tablecloths on the ceiling with some clear push pins, made a large cut out of Ariel swimming out of black poster board, and placed it on top of the tablecloth. I also added a few more cutouts of fish to swim around her. My daughter loved this and could be often found lying on our couch, gazing at Ariel swimming above her. The light from our ceiling fan created a neat glow around The Little Mermaid. This project took relatively little time and only cost about five dollars to complete.

I made large cutouts of Ariel, Sebastian, King Triton, Ursula, as well as a large seashell and a few seahorses. My husband and brother-in-law cut them out with a jigsaw and my daughters helped me to paint.

My kids always enjoy playing with these cutouts. They make wonderful photo props. I have made numerous cutouts through the years. Check out our Star Wars party and My Little Pony party from last year. Here is Ursula sitting with a cupcake that my daughter made for her.

Little Pumpkin enjoyed pulling her rocking chair in front of the giant shell to sit and chill.

I made a printable banner with my daughter’s name and printed it out onto white cardstock. Cookie cutters (see below) were used to trace the shapes of seashells, seahorses, and sea stars onto glitter cardstock. My daughter arranged the cutouts onto her banner and together we taped everything on, stringing it up with leftover Christmas ribbon in green glitter.

Party Activities:

I cut out the largest number six that I could make out of the sides of a medium moving box, traced it onto another side, and repurposed the sides of a medium priority box in between, adhering everything first with masking tape, then covering everything up with glue, then tissue paper. Ariel’s face, chest, and the end of her tail is paint on white poster board. The main part of her tail was made from some wonderful teal plates I found at the Dollar Tree. I liked the color and shine to them. I used a circle punch then glued overlapping circles and semi circles to create the main body of her tail. The rest of the pinata, including Ariel’s hair was made by adding another layer of crepe paper streamer that I then fringed.

In addition to coloring, the kids made seashell headbands (gluing on mermaid themed sequins I found at Hobby Lobby), mermaid necklaces (I purchased these mermaid themed charms from Amazon), and mermaid popsicle stick puppets. I created a template for the mermaid puppets from a drawing I made for my daughter, that is free to download below.

This file is best printed out onto cardstock. There are six mermaids per page with dotted cut lines that you can use to divide the mermaids up for party favors. We made the birthday girl bags to distribute to her classmates as well and included these puppets. Your child can color, cut, and add embellishments such as googly eyes, glitter, sequins, or even colorful fingerprint stamps onto their mermaids and then tape them to popsicle sticks, pencils, or straws. My girls enjoyed using glitter washi tape and tracing tails onto glitter cardstock to cut out and paste.

I wanted to make little pumpkin something that she could play with as she was too young for many of the craft activities. I also needed something to help cover up the eye sore of all the kids’ toys, papers, and books that were usually crammed into this cubicle so I created an under the sea felt board. My kids all enjoyed this activity. I adhered two large pieces of light blue flannel to the top of the kids’ cubicle and made cutouts of seahorses out of felt. I cut out extra pieces of felt into different shapes (circles, triangles, squares, etc.) and my kids made hats, presents, ice cream cones, bows, and bowties. Little pumpkin learned to say circle and pom pom with this activity. When she was bored of the felt board, she would stuff pom poms into clear ornaments (this has been her favorite Christmas decorating activity) or push them into the holes of the inverted wire basket.

Food:

My daughter requested a three layer fondant covered strawberry cake with Ariel and as many sea creatures as we could manage. As this winter has been hard on my hands and as I was also running a little short on time, I avoided the fondant this year and opted to try a doll cake. The cake was made out of two 8 inch round cake pans and the top of a Wilton giant cupcake pan. Ariel was a new doll. I just took off her dress, wrapped her body in saran wrap and pushed it into the cake. I purchased these molds from Amazon to make under the sea decorations out of white candy melts. Ariel’s dress is buttercream frosting from Two Sisters piped on as ruffles and rosettes. My daughter liked this cake so much, she requested a doll cake for her next birthday until we go through all the Disney princesses and my preschooler already requested a Tiana doll cake for her next birthday.

I always like to incorporate the birthday child’s favorite food and theme into the menu. My daughter’s favorite food is baked beans. We love this recipe from The Pioneer Woman.  The kids are also half Vietnamese so they always get these delicious egg rolls. We also enjoyed some homemade mac and cheese made withs shells of course and shrimp chips.

Favors:

I have a big supply of these bags on Amazon and downloaded some free for personal use clip art, adding the words, “Thanks for Splashing on by!” The bags were filled with free coloring pages that I edited to add the birthday girl’s name and age. I create personalized coloring pages here. The bags also included some mermaid sight word worksheets that I made for my daughter, the mermaid popsicle stick puppet printable from above, these temporary tattoos I purchased from Amazon, and a scratch art seahorse. The mermaid sight word worksheets and seahorse template that I created for my daughter are both free to download below.

There are three pages of sight word worksheets that go over twelve very common two and three letter sight words. I invited my daughter to trace the letters in each word, then find the letters in the word, and stamp them onto each starfish. We used our alphabet stamp set from Melissa and Doug which the kids love and use often. My preschooler, age 3, also enjoyed this activity as she is always trying to learn like big sister. We tried this activity with alphabet pasta and the kids liked this as well. My only advice is to either have the alphabet stamps arranged in order, or have the letters in the alphabet pasta prepicked and semi-sorted otherwise the task of finding the correct letter in a sea of many letters can sometimes seem too overwhelming.

This file is best printed out onto cardstock and used as a template to cut out more seahorses from scratch art paper. The kids love scratch art. I purchased this scratch art paper from Amazon.The set comes with only a few wooden sticks but my kids ended up using toothpicks and popsicle sticks to scratch their designs onto their seahorses. I used this same template to make the seahorses out of stiff felt for Little Pumpkin’s felt board.

Each guest also received:

I used this recipe to make the sugar cookies. I purchased these cookie cutters from Amazon. These are the same cutters I used as a template to trace the shapes to embellish my daughter’s banner. They were super sturdy, easy to use, and clean. As I have two other daughters, I am sure these cutters will be used time and time again. They could also work for other under the sea theme birthdays such as Moana, Baby Shark, Clark the Shark, or even a pirate themed or beach birthday.

I made vanilla cupcakes using this recipe. I had some glitter bows that were leftover from a previous Minnie Mouse birthday that I had originally purchased from the Dollar Tree. I just cut off the tails of the bow and taped them to a toothpick to create very simple but still sparkly and glittery mermaid tails. I also used the cut off tails as a template to trace onto more glitter cardstock to tie in the other birthday colors. You just have to insert the tails in a little sideways so it looks like mermaids are diving into the water (delicious blue buttercream frosting). Otherwise… the tails will look like giant tulips. Swedish fish were placed on top of the remaining cupcakes and my kids enjoyed having them swim into their mouths.

My greatest joy in creating these parties for my children is seeing all their excitement. This is a picture that my daughter drew in the days leading up to her birthday. It make my heart so happy!

Your child may also enjoy:

I hope this post inspires you to create something fun for your little mermaid fan!