Mad Hatter Tea Party: Lanterns

An Alice In Wonderland / Mad Hatter Tea Party is by no means complete without at least one string of paper lanterns. For this fabulous occasion, I also wanted to incorporate empty frames for that extra psychedelic feel.I found these little guys (you'll see just how miniature they are in the pic below) at Michael's. They were about $1 or so. Super cheap! I splurged and bought three. Feeling like a big spender that day, I also went ahead and picked up a few oval shaped mini frames to mix it up. You could also use paper die cuts and those are available online through Amazon.The beauty of this party is that it doesn't have to be clean and precise. I used a mix of acrylic craft paints - nothing fancy. I let the kids jump in to help give the pieces more character and we all loved every minute of it (and no, my kids are not half oompa loompa. I totally had my settings too warm that day. Lesson learned!).The middle child decided to paint her car instead, but as a parent, you let your kids stay busy. Busy kids = productive mom. Creative kids = better world.Lucky for me (because I'm always on a super thin budget), for this project I also had some miniature paper lanterns leftover from my dad's 50th. Wish I had taken a before shot to show you how they pretty much had faded to white from being left out in the sun for months on end. Score for me! I let the kids help for this part too.I bought some larger lanterns online to mix up the sizes. I love ordering my paper lanterns online here. Prices are fairly reasonable and I'm always pleased with their shipping times. I wish they had an affiliate program! If you're a loyal Amazon customer, you can also find them online by linking to Amazon here.I also bought some playing cards and ribbon from the local dollar store. I lucked out with all of the heart themed ribbon as this was back in February. If you've got some wiggle room in your budget, you can take it up a notch by adding over-sized playing cards.The finished result looked something like this:I wish I had taken shots from all of the different angles to give you the full effect.  None of our pictures did it justice, but we had fun with it and let ourselves "color outside the lines"!