Birthday Week: Place Setting How-To

I LOVE birthdays.  I love planning my kids' birthdays. As you well know, I'm a budget-er and I like to do things cheap...er...frugally.  For the past couple of months I've been on Pinterest (LOVE this) getting ideas for a Hello Kitty birthday party for Rosebud.  

After looking around and getting some ideas, I also came up with some of my own.  We have these really pretty glass dinner plates that I bought last Easter time.  I love doing things seasonally around here, and justified the cost (they were from Kroger, so they were not anything super expensive) by deciding that they'd get used also for Rosebud's birthday parties!   I wanted to do something Hello Kitty theme for the table, while still using the glass plates. I decided to make place setting cards for each guest to put UNDER the plates.  Here's what I came up with.  

 First I took scrap paper and played with her face shape.  I kinda guessed a few times and then once I liked it, cut it out.

 I then traced it onto white cardstock.  I love scrapbooking (have ZERO time for it) and have several file folders that each hold a different color of paper that has been previously used, but has some leftover.  That is what I used for this project.  After cutting out her head, I used a Sharpie to outline and add features.

 I had watched a couple of tutorials I found via Pinterest and saw how other people made her bow.  It is asymmetrical and pretty easy to sketch out.  Again, I made a template and used it to make several colors of bows.

 After cutting it out, I used the Sharpie to add more detail.

 Last I glued on the bow and some whisters (more cardstock scraps).  This is how it looks under the glass plate.  This is the table cloth I'll be using that day too.  I'll add each guests' name to the ear and wah-la!  Placecards!  They also double as making our plates fit the theme.  

Here they are all finished.   I like how the colors in the cloth go with the bows.  I made some Keropi frog ones too for our male guests.  He was just the same head as Hello Kitty with the ears rounded off completely.  I then added two round circles for eyes and, of course, used the Sharpie for his features.

I have a few more DIY things up my sleeve that I'll share later!