Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Truck Theme Birthday/Corporate/Christmas Party


I know I am a little late putting up these photos, but I needed to focus on a few parties and design clients and this post got pushed onto the back burner.

The event, these unique trucks were created for, was a very special 90th birthday party.  The birthday boy founded a waste management company, hence the truck theme, and since it was near Christmas, I made the trucks look like over-sized ornaments.  I wish I could say I decided to do the sparkle right away, but it was really due to a mishap with the "special" paint I used on the plastic trucks.


Walking out of the toy store with 11 Toy Story trucks was the first fun part of the project.  Once I got them home, I had to remove the little pink bear on the front of the trucks (I ripped him off with pliers... I felt so cruel)  These pink bears talk to you when they are touched, so I has some pretty interesting conversations with them.  I then taped the areas I did not want to paint.  This is when things went wrong.  I primed them with the proper primer and waited the allotted time to paint them again, and the paint started bubbling and cracking.  OMG!  I had to sand them down and tried again.  NOPE. They bubbled and crackled again.  I was beside myself.  Hmmmm what to do?  What to do?  Then I had my "ah ha" moment.  Sparkles.  I was going to start with JUST the back being done in white sparkles, but the blue front looked boring, so I sparkled the front too.  In the photo below, I used glue to put on the sparkles, but when everything dried, I did have holidays, so I went back with blue paint and shook on more of the glitter.


Once the blue was done, I thought now the silver needs some, then of course the red back up lights, then I did the windows with black.  My house, my clothes, my dogs feet, everything had a touch of this magical fairy dust stuck to it.  Since I work on project between going to my store or design jobs, there are times my projects are left out in the open, or I don't have time to clean up.  This was one of those projects, and I literally placed a sign on my front door that said "Warning, glitter zone, enter at your own risk"  :-)  .


For the base, I cut foam boards, then covered them with buffalo snow fastened by floral pins. this was one of two layers.


These were the favors I had created for the party that were placed at each place setting




In the background, the hostess of the birthday party had a dvd created that played on the flat screen tv, and we had shadow boxes created to document her fathers life and how the business started.  


For more party and decorating ideas, please visit my web site New England Fine Living.com or if you have a project you would like to discuss please contact me. E-mail

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