Mermaid Party Fun
When your five-year-old niece celebrates her birthday while vacationing on Lake Michigan, you’ve got to make a splash!
Sweet Clara requested mermaid crafts for her beach party, and I was happy to comply. We dyed some gorgeous mermaid tails and strung beaded treasures- a couple of easy outdoor crafts for a beautiful lakeside afternoon!
Mermaid Tails
Supplies:
- Flour sack kitchen towels, cut in half (I bought a 4 pack from Target for $3.99)
- Ribbon or elastic
- Thread
- Liquid watercolors
- Brushes
- Pipettes
- Hot glue gun (or needle and thread)
I transported my liquid water colors in these containers, then watered them down in small paper cups for painting.
Steps:
1. Fully dampen your cloths. We dipped ours in buckets of water and wrung them out. (Wet cloths will help the water color bleed for a more tie-dye effect.)
Trays with a little edge are super helpful for a project like this... we love our big plastic ones from Ikea!
2. Let your kids go to town with brushes, pipettes, and water colors. I limited the palette to green, blue, and purple for an "under-the-sea" vibe, but you could go with anything here. Pipettes were definitely the most fun!
3. Hang to dry
(Preferably on an adorable wave fence at your vacation house)
4. Use strong thread to tie a "flipper" on one end of each cloth, about 6 inches from the bottom. Make one knot horizontal, and one knot vertical.
5. Fold the top edge down over a ribbon and secure. You could stitch this down, but I'm on vacation. Glue gun it is!
That's it... mermaid tails ready for adventure! I love love love how these turned out!
Treasure Necklaces
Supplies:
- Beads (I found these lovely pearly ones at Michaels)
- String for beading
- Shells
- Hot glue gun
- Mason jars
- Sand
Steps:
1. Use hot glue to attach a pony bead to the back of a few shells
2. Divide beads, shells, and sand evenly into mason jars
3. Tie a string for beading around each jar
5. Give one jar to each child (we used those Ikea trays again) and let them dig through the sand to find "mermaid treasure."
6. Rinse off the beads if necessary (we had buckets of water handy from our mermaid tails) and create some beautifully magical jewelry.
Happy Birthday, Clara!