A Skylanders Birthday!

Big Bear turned 8 on Sunday! This year he wanted to celebrate with a Skylanders-themed party. So, of course, mama had to get her craft on!

His favorite Skylander character is Gill Grunt, so I made a poster. I started by tracing a coloring page image of Gill Grunt onto posterboard using my neighbor's nifty projector:

Then I used acrylic paints and filled him with color:

Here he is all painted up:

Finally, I finished him up by using a Sharpie to do the lettering and outline of the image:

While the paint alone looked okay, I think the outlining gives it a nice, finished look.

There had to be a Skylanders cake:

The symbols on the top represent the ten elements featured in the game. I mixed and piped 11 different colors of icing, which was time consuming, but the effect was worth it. I didn't have room to actually write "Happy Birthday" on the top after doing the elements, so I just put his name and the big "8".

We played two games-- Twister and Bingo. With my husband's help, we created a Skylanders-themed bingo game for the kids to play. I found a bunch of images, sized and edited them. Then he wrote a program to create 5x5 bingo cards that would all be unique. Here's a sample:

So cool!!! Then I went and had them printed out for the party.

The game was a hit!

Balloons, snacks, games, more snacks, cake, presents... it was a fun party.

Here's the birthday boy holding his Gill Grunt figure in front of his new poster.

I just love that smile!

Happy birthday, Big Bear!!!