Ladies Night Out – Your Marilyn Monroe Party

Ladies, it’s time to break away from your weekly routine for a glamorous night out! Whether you are celebrating a special occasion with your girlfriends, or searching for a fun ladies night out theme, a Marilyn Monroe party is the ticket! The Marilyn Monroe party supplies are perfect for this blonde bombshell iconic theme.

Invitations
When you send out invitations, choose a glitzy design like the black and silver personalized Hollywood star invitation. An entertaining approach to get everyone involved in the theme is to suggest that each lady dress up in their best interpretation of Marilyn Monroe. Have the ladies nominate the best Marilyn look-a-likes and give the top three ladies a special prize, such as the Marilyn Monroe bath suit notebook.

Decorations
Fashion a dramatic background for your venue by hanging sets of black metallic foil party curtains, or use a set of foil curtains to hang in a doorway as the entrance to your party area. Choose either the Marilyn red dress personalized banner or the Marilyn white dress personalized banner to announce your party and set the tone. Form a proper walkway for your famous guests with a red carpet aisle runner and the Hollywood rope scene setter to pave the way.

Select from four beautiful Marilyn Monroe standees and place one near the entrance to the party, use another one as a focal point in your decorating scheme, and then place the other two around the room to take pictures with the star of the evening with her starlets. Glam up the walls with amazing Marilyn Monroe canvases to highlight her different poses. Bring some life to the chairs by tying a red feather boa to adorn the back of each guest’s chair, providing each lady with a boa to enjoy for the evening and take home with her when the evening comes to an end.

Tableware
Make your tables sparkle by covering them with black liquid metallic fabric. Design gorgeous centerpieces using a combination of materials. Start with the reflecting mirror centerpiece, and then add the rose topiary centerpiece in the middle, accent the mirror by placing red, black, and silver dots confetti on the glass, along with several tea lights. As a final touch, drape pearl beads on the glass around the topiary. Red lipstick is Marilyn’s signature color, so pull that in to your tables with the classic red plastic kit-n-kaboodle table setting.

Party Favors
Don’t send your guests away empty handed, fill silver drawstring bags with Marilyn Monroe favors: mint tins, playing cards, and personalized chocolate candy bars.

Parade Floats 101

There may come a time (or perhaps already has?) when your organization determines it wants to participate in a parade in your community, and works out a budget for building a float. Whether it’s for your school, business, or social club – and regardless of the size of the organization – the steps for putting together a float are pretty much the same.

Your first move, upon registering for the parade, is to obtain and understand all the rules. Some parades, for example, limit the size of the trailers that can be used, and many require approval of float design. If the parade has a theme, you’ll need to know that, too, before your group starts generating concepts for your float.

Once you know about any prohibitions, the theme, and the size of the space you’ll be working with, the committee can start brainstorming. Ideas that end up being serious candidates for consideration should be conceptualized in slogans, sketches, and a color scheme. When the creative work is completed and approved, develop timelines and deadlines, which are crucial if your group is to avoid having to work around the clock the last few days before the parade! Then it’s time for the physical labor. Tasks can be split up roughly as follows:

Building the foundation (skirt frame, deck)

Erecting the main structure/setting

Props

Costumes

Signage

Be sure to take a look at what ShindigZ Party has to offer when you are working out signage options, materials and even large prop pieces, which can provide polish as well as save a lot of time and labor. For this reason we suggest checking out our Theme Party Decorations and Banners as well as the Float Decorations catalog.

Our last tip for now is to work out the finishing touches that will best be saved for the parade site itself. For one thing, your float may be traveling a snail’s pace throughout the parade, but that probably won’t be true for getting the float to the starting line-up! Another reason is that some decorations you’ll want to use, such as balloons, will deteriorate fairly quickly outdoors even under the best of weather conditions.

We hope these tips are of use to you in your float-building project and that you’ll visit ShindigZ.com Party Supplies soon for more ideas.

How to Take a Graduation Party Outside

If you are planning a graduation party this spring, you may be considering taking it outdoors for the soft, relatively bug-free weather and a decorating canvas of large green spaces. In that case, you’ll need to be on the lookout for decorations that will hold up in a bit of wind and – dare we say it? – perhaps a bit of moisture as well.

Corex, vinyl and foil are going to be your friends for this project. Think: pennants, bunting and fringe.

Start by selecting a color scheme for the event. School colors are fine, but not the only choice here. Depending on the party date, level of formality, etc., you might also go with bright primary colors, patriotic colors, or a combo that emphasizes gold or silver. To really explore the range of options, you’ll want to peek at Float Decorations, Carnival Theme Decorations or other Special Party Events supplies also.

More:

Surprise your grad with a durable, personalized yard sign to mark the site and the occasion, in the same colors as your outdoor party decorations.

Hang a big banner over the entrance to the party.

Use a few weighted mylar balloons, which will hold up better than latex. Our blue, gold or Silver 2010 Mylar Balloons are show-stoppers at a full 40 inches in height!

Select graduation favors that won’t fly away in the slightest of breeze (or melt in the mist). May we suggest mint tins, bubbles or cell phone charms.

Encourage active memory-making by supplying disposable cameras to each table, or by providing cups of permanent markers and white or light-colored tee shirts as autograph canvases.

Our Graduation Party catalog has pages and pages of ideas for the 2010 grad party. Visit soon!

Five Ways to Personalize Your Cinco de Mayo Event

The ShindigZ catalog of supplies for Cinco de Mayo parties includes loads of items you can customize to your taste, from fiesta decorations to banners and favors. Let us count the ways…

1. Invitations. Our Create-an-Invitation process is a fun way to customize design options — or if you can hand-deliver the invitations, attach our beautiful Del Sol invites to personalized trinkets.

2. Decorations. Select a great entranceway, archway or large room decoration such as our Personalized Fiesta Arch or gorgeous Cantina. They are beautiful in their own right and can be made uniquely yours with your family name, event name or party slogan. Add festive garland, balloons and decorative tableware to complete the look.

3. Banners. The Deluxe Hot Times Fiesta or Del Sol Kit-N-Kaboodle includes a 30-inch Attach N’ Go Banner. These banners are low-tack and can be hung almost anywhere. Or, choose from other Cinco de Mayo custom banners, including designs that incorporate your own photo!

4. Favors. ShindigZ has lots of personalized party favors that are NEW for Cinco de Mayo this year! Choose from fiesta-themed cookie tins – including custom photo tins! — mint tins, and candy bars. Of course our cactus glass favors and votive holders are always a hit.

5. Photo props. Customize the free-standing Amigos Couple Photo Stand-In with two lines of copy and get the camera ready!

Cinco de Mayo is only a month away! Shop ShindigZ Cinco de Mayo Celebration and Personalized Party Supplies catalogs today.

Mark Earth Day Events with Customized Banners

April 22 is not only Earth Day, it’s the 40th anniversary of Earth Day this year! Many communities will be celebrating the day with extra zest and special activities on this milestone anniversary. The following are a few of the many plans being made for spending Earth Day 2010:

Tree-planting and/or tree seedling give-aways

Cleanups of rivers, beaches and trails

Nature hikes

Restorations of prairie and other habitat

Recycling and energy fairs

Community gardening projects

Festivals featuring sustainably-grown foods

Whether the activities you and your community organization are planning for this year’s Earth Day celebration are as simple as a group litter pickup in the park or as coordinated as a fair or festival, count on ShindigZ for a fantastic selection of customizable event banners for advertising your affair around town, marking event locations, and stringing across the fronts of registration tables and fair booths!

Vinyl banners from ShindigZ have metal grommets for hanging, come in seven sizes, and start at less than $15 each. Personalization is free.

Select the nature-inspired Lakeview or Kentucky Views photo designs from the vinyl Destination Banners collection, or go for the greenly elegant simplicity of the Leaves of Grass Banner. Another option is to celebrate the era from which Earth Day arose, with ShindigZ retro banners.

Whatever your design choice, your banners will be tough enough for outdoor use and reusable. We think Mother Nature would approve.

For more ideas, visit the ShindigZ Earth Day Party catalog pages.

Boy Scouts Use Personalized Banners

Boy Scouts Banner

There are literally a million ways to use a ShindigZ personalized banner.

The Boy Scouts of America have customized our vinyl banners, like the Welcome Home Banner shown, for events like:

• Pack Fundraisers
• Patriotic Parades
• Welcome Home Events
• Den Meetings
• Badge Nights
• Team Building Events
• Camping Overnights

ShindigZ banners come is many sizes from three and a half feet wide up to 18 feet. Add some patriotic decorations for a memorable event.

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA)  was founded in 1910 and is the largest youth group in the United States currently consisting of over five million members.