Cowabunga: How to throw a Ninja Turtles party

Just in time for the release of director Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—a remake of the popular '80s cartoon—our crafting friend Elizabeth gives us the deets on her totally tubular DIY birthday party spread.

All supplies used can be found at most craft stores.

To create the turtles, take two pieces of 12 x 12 scrapbooking cardstock sheets and fold each of them into a fan in 1-inch or smaller strips. Take the two 'fanned' pieces and staple the tops and bottoms together along the flat side to create a large fanned rectangle. Gather the whole rectangle together, secure a wire around the middle and pull the sides out to form a circle.

Inspired by Pinterest, I created the eye masks out of cardstock and attached them to the turtles using clear hockey tape (my favourite card stock adhesive!) to complete the look. 

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The Ninja Turtle pennants were pretty easy to make, but finding red and white checkered scrapbook paper proved impossible. Instead I cut 1-cm strips of scrapbook and cardstock paper and made use of my primary school paper-weaving skills to weave and glue a whole sheet together before cutting the triangles. It worked perfectly! I also downloaded a Ninja Turtle font to spell out the lucky birthday boy’s name and stay true to the theme. Hanging up, they were the perfect decor to welcome eager little ninjas.

To create these adorable felt masks, I downloaded mask patterns online and made a couple tweaks to accommodate different sizes—infant, toddler and adult. Once I cut out all the pieces, I used a sewing machine and sewed together the coloured bandanas to the green base. I tucked the elastic in between the bandana and mask to keep it nice and tidy.

Supplies:
Scissors
Marker
Green felt squares for the base of the mask (1 square fits approx. 3-4 masks)
Coloured felt for the bandanas
Sewing machine and thread
Crafting Elastic, approx. 1 cm thick or less

No ninja turtle is complete without a shell! After drawing a simple pattern and sewing the shell spots and backpack-style elastic straps to the green shell, each child was transformed into their favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Feel free to alter the colours if you're having trouble finding felt. For example, a brown shell with green spots works just as well. 

Supplies: 
Scissors
Marker
One square of green felt for each shell
Yellow felt to cut out shell spots
Crafting Elastic, approx. 1 cm thick or less 

Since this was a toddler party, it was important to make the weapons kid-friendly. I drew patterns based on images I had Googled to keep the theme consistent. For the nun-chuck 'chain' I relived my day camp experiences and wove the thin elastic using the 'cobra' technique to make the elastic into a thicker, toddler-friendly rope. Each weapon was also stuffed with batting to add texture and remain soft. The more batting you pack in, the stiffer the weapon will be. 

Supplies:
Marker
Scissors
Various colours of felt
Craft batting
Sewing machine and thread
Crafting Elastic, approx. 1 cm thick or less

What's a party without cake?  I created personalized toppers for cupcakes that added lots of visual fun and were still easy for toddlers to remove so they could get to the good stuff. To make, I Googled Ninja Turtles images, printed off my favourites and then cut them out using a 1.5-inch circle punch and glued the circles onto toothpicks using premium scrapbook glue by Scotch.

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