A Novel Affair :: tea party :: DIY crafts and games

Our annual Mother's Day tea party this year was a library theme. To set the tone for our party I converted our China hutch into a library book display case. To accomplish this I asked Mr. Wonderful to remove the two front doors so that the contents inside would be more visible. Once that was done I removed everything from the four shelves in the middle section so that I could create a little library.

Then I gathered some of our old books, tea cups and saucers, assorted flowers and our Scrabble game and went to work. The display was coming together but it seemed to need a little something else so I cut a bunch of paper circles, sewed them together on my sewing machine which turned them into a little banner and then hung them behind the books. It was just what it needed. 

The book display looked great however the shelves on both sides were still full of dishes which you could see through the glass doors and distracted from the focal point in the center. I wasn't keen on taking everything out though and had been putting it off for a couple days when it finally occurred to me to cover the windows with book pages instead. So, with a little tape and a bunch of pages I went to work. It didn't take long at all but I thought it still needed a little something else so I made some more banners. This time I made the circles slightly larger than the ones in the middle and then punched holes in the top and used cotton string to thread them together. Now the library book display was definitely the focal point. 

Next I made a couple cute book page topiaries for the tables. 

For the first one I punch medium sized flowers, used old assorted buttons for the center of the flowers and straight pins to attach the flowers a styrofoam balls. I also stained the edges of the flowers with ink for an aged look. 

Next I made a cupcake topiary and used white pearl pins to attach small flowers. I also made the cupcake liner it sits on and the tag and small flag. The tag is cut from card stock, stamped on the back and a reinforcement attached around the hole.  

The Admit One ticket on the top is from a big roll of tickets I happened to save from another event. I thought it would cute to add one to the top so I took some wire and twisted it with my pliers to make a little ticket holder. 

My old book pages came in handy for making napkin pockets too. Each pocket took one page which I trimmed, folded in half, scalloped cut the edge and then sewed together on my sewing machine with pink thread that coordinated with the color scheme. Then a heart was stamped in the middle of each pocket. 

The menu included both regular and gluten free choices so I decided to make matching book page picks to make it easy to identify the gluten free food.

Miss E read a fun poem about Why Librarians Wear Cardigans and then gave the guests a custom word search she made for them to work on while we served the Noveltea. 

Small recycled jars, filled with buttons and decorated with coordinating flowers, held pencils which were placed at each end of the table so that they would be handy for the word search.

We also played "Name the Book/Author" at the end of our party. I used some of my favorite quotes as well as some other popular quotes and printed them on library cards which I then decorated with my date stamp to keep with the theme. The cards were placed in each end of the long card catalog box on the table and then passed out when we played the game. Each guest took turns reading the quote on their card and the others tried to guess the author and/or the name of the book. 

It was hard to narrow down all the great things that could be created with book pages but time dictated how much I could actually do before switching gears to the food. The menu was a bit long but lots of fun. I will be back soon to share what we served to the book club members at A Novel Affair.

Happy Saturday!