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My daughter just turned one on the 29th of June, so of course I went all out on decorating despite us only inviting a small group of close friends and family. As soon as I learned that Covid-19 restrictions were starting to lift some in my area and that having a small get together was an actual possibility I started searching my Pinterest boards for what I could accomplish in under a month.
First thing to do was decide a theme, and it was between "One in a Melon" or roses... I opted for roses as soon as I discovered that Jacee didn't like watermelons at the time. After browsing multiple rose themed first birthday ideas, I realized that not only would she need a cake smash, but a backdrop to go with it. I fell in love with the idea and looks of a balloon arch, and decided to combine multiple ideas to create the finished product. For Jacee's high chair, I created a tutu out of tulle, twine, and fake flowers with a cardstock "one" as a finishing touch.
Second thing to do was to decide what to do for the party appetizers/dessert. My wonderful mom made a number one out of beautiful cupcake roses which she baked from a mix, and I found some pretty cupcake liners to put them in!
For the final finishing touches I found beautiful floral wrapping paper for Jacee's presents, some tissue pom-poms, and a photo album to hold all of the photos of Jacee from the past year (Pioneer Photo Albums have made a forever customer of me with all the different colors they offer plus different sizes). I also decided to make good use of my Cricut Explore Air 2 by creating a "Happy Birthday" banner out of construction paper, sewing thread, and purple paper fasteners.
Balloon Arch Instructions:
To create the balloon arch, you'll need a balloon strip, around one-hundred latex balloons, string, command hooks, a number balloon, and artificial flowers and leaves. There's an awesome kit on Amazon here that has everything except for the number balloon, hooks, and flowers!
When you use the balloon strip, it makes the arch pretty simple to make: after blowing up the balloons you slip the lip of the balloon into the holes along the strip. I tried to do this in alternating colors for the most part, but with more purple than any other colors they will sometimes end up next to each other.
I found that to get the arch as dense as I wanted sometimes I would tie two balloons together before putting them in a hole. Once I had the arch halfway put together I attached it to the wall with the string and hooks horizontally. This enabled me to work vertically from the top to the bottom when finishing the second half.
Once the balloon arch itself was finished, I attached the number one balloon and then the flowers and leaves.
And voila! An easy, beautiful balloon arch with minimal effort!
Be watching for my next tutorial on creating the "Happy Birthday" banner that includes a free svg file!
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