[jeSsiCa & raNai]

[R] When we started planning this party, we agreed that we needed to have a stellar photo area since costumes were required. We threw around ideas about a giant mural, but that just didn’t fit and would be really time-consuming. I was mindlessly browsing Pinterest one day, and I stumbled upon this amazing post. I knew my dad had a bunch of old doors stored at the house that he wasn’t going to use, so I had the perfect DIY project for myself! Even if you don’t have a random stash of doors, check out your local thrift stores, yard sales, salvage yards and Habitat for Humanity Re-stores for deals. If you’re not able to score them for a steal, check out your local home improvement stores; you can usually get hollow doors for under $30.

I painted the doors with spray paint because I wanted the colors to match all of the other decor. To be honest, I would not use spray paint ever again on a door! I’ve sprayed a LOT of projects in the past with amazing success, but these came out a bit splotchy and scratched easily. I think it was just the sheer size of the doors that made it difficult.

My dad helped me make the doors functional. He hinged them all together so it would make an accordion fold. I wanted fancy door handles like they have in Alice in Wonderland. Instead of finding actual antique pieces that would cost a lot of money, I used these handles that are meant to be hung on the wall.

That meant my dad had to seal up the already cut door holes, which he did with some plywood. Then I was able to put a screw in the plywood to hang the handle.

Even with the paint issue, they turned out pretty amazing! Everybody raved about how cool they were.

[J] Next we knew we had to have some super cute Alice in Wonderland props. We definitely had a blast with our props so we highly recommend a photo booth. A lot of the props we used came from previous costume parties we’ve had but we always seem to start off at one place: the Dollar Store. We found a lot of cool glasses & also found a HUGE comb that was hilarious. They have a great variety of little joke items; just look for fun items that are a little out there.

My birthday is in April so Ranai found some silly rabbit masks that went great. When thinking of a costume idea for my dad, I remembered that my mom had some fabric left over from a project so she made my dad an over-sized tie that was in keeping with the theme. At first he was a bit hesitant but in the end, as you can see, he had a blast 😀 It’s hard not to have fun when you are surrounded by sillyness!

Since we had a lot of tea cups out as decor we were able to improvise and use table decorations as props too. We used a HUGE mug like this one at Joann’s. It’ was one of my favorites.

Lastly we wanted to incorporate character props. I searched for tea cup and tea pot clip art and printed them on 8.5 x 11 sized white cardstock paper. Choose the ones you like and you can print and cut them out yourself. If you don’t have time to search for clip art of the Cheshire Cat’s smile or the Mad Hatter’s hat…you can find printable character photo booth props like these and purchase them for a low fee. Then, you just print, cut and glue them on a long kabob skewer!

Here’s a tip: what I did before putting them on the skewers was after I printed them I glued them onto a piece of cardboard (not too thick). I cut out each prop and then put them on the skewers. They turned out GREAT. Nice and sturdy and so much fun!

Let your imagination run wild when prop-hunting…it makes it that much more fun!