Over the holiday break I was super busy helping family out with two major occasions. The first one being my father-in-law’s 60th birthday. He is a tennis nut and after much research my mother-in-law and I concluded there isn’t much out there for tennis decorations. We put our brains together (which can sometimes lead to trouble in a good way of course) and came up with some great ways to incorporate his favorite past time.
One thing my mother-in-law knew she wanted to include was fun facts from 1953 the year he was born. She scoured the internet coming up with the most fun and timely facts and then I designed these table tents to include them.
You will see that I placed the question on the front and then on the inside I just included a brief part of the question and answer. I used a great free font download that was what I thought super sporty. Its called Branboll and you can find the download here
Next up was centerpieces for the tables. Like I said there isn’t much out there for decorations to purchase so we made our own. My MIL found these vases at Garden Ridge Pottery. I then filled them with my FIL leftover tennis balls (he didn’t even notice they were missing) I then used my new Silhouette to cut everything out. One-by-one I glued each layer to the next using some fine nose crafting tweezers and a Zig Two way glue pen.
I used crinkle paper to fill the vase on the right and stuck the dowel in. For the centerpieces on the left I had a hard time getting the dowels to stand straight up so we sliced a line in the tennis ball with an exacto knife and then put the dowel inside and it was the perfect fix!
Another great addition to the tables was the tennis themed menu card. This was all my MIL and she printed them out at home super simple project that adds to the theme and helped the guests.
What birthday party would be complete without a banner. So I took to the Silhouette again and used another sporty free font download Graduate (if I can find the link I will update)
To celebrate my FIL’s 60 years we created a photo collage for him. You may have seen this idea on Pinterest – as a photo enthusiast I love it and think it turned out great. I just took two pieces of foam core and drew free hand the 6 on one sheet and 0 on the other. I then used my exacto knife again to cut them out. Make sure you have a fresh blade and either a thick piece of card board or cutting mat underneath. I then touched up the numbers with cuts based on what appealed to my eye.
I printed way more photos than I needed to because I wasn’t sure what would end up working. My suggestion is just make sure you have a good balance of horizontal and vertical especially with a number like 6. The two orientations of photos really help give you variety to pull from.
For those that read my blog regularly you know my MIL and SIL have their own cake baking/decorating business. They whipped up this cute feature cake with my FIL on top.
Last but not least both my MIL and I loved this idea for favors which again if you are on Pinterest at all I am sure you have seen. But we had fun customizing this just for my FIL.
Each lollipop had a tennis ball tag that says “Getting Old Sucks” and on the flip side “Happy 60th Birthday David” you can find those favor tags in my Etsy shop along with some other cute tennis themed things!
The party was a great success and we wish my FIL aka Papa a very Happy 60th Birthday year!
The Obsessive Crafter 