Dance club party

SETTING THE SCENE

Ready to decorate?

A truly unique birthday experience starts with the decorations. Some effort here will help  bring your guests into the world that you are creating. We generally prefer not to spend a lot of money on elaborate decorations, rather our focus is on projects we can do ourselves and inexpensive store bought items that have a big bang for the buck. 

What will you need

Consider the items below as our wish list of decorations. Pick and choose what works best for your space and budget. The placement of each item will described in more detail in the sections that follow.

To make:

- Mirror ball "Happy Birthday" sign

- A sign for your dance club

To buy:

- Balloons (preferably metallic)

- Metallic fringe curtains (available at Oriental Trading)

- Disco ball scene setters (available at Oriental Trading)

- Dangling star swirls (available at Oriental Trading)

- Black lights

- Mirror ball or other spinning disco lights

- Fog machine

Room-by-room guide

The meet and greet room: limited decoration is needed here. Some balloons or a homemade Happy Birthday sign will do. Below is a simple, but fun sign project.

Project - birthday banner: Find clip art of a mirror ball and scale the picture to fill an entire sheet of paper. In the middle of the mirror ball place the first letter of your birthday sign. Repeat the process for each letter, creating one sheet for each letter. Hang the sheets in the wall for a fun addition to your decorations. Here is an example we have created in PowerPoint. [download ppt]

The dancing room: We are going to hang some decorations now and some during the party (described later). Below are suggestions for items to put in place before the party.

- Floor-to-ceiling metallic fringe curtains for the walls. These are often used as door hangers, but work great as a wall covering. A couple on each wall is sufficient

- Metallic disco ball scene setters also for the walls

- Dangling star swirls hanging from the ceiling

- Black lights (inexpensive incandescent bulbs can be used)

To be put up later in the party:

- Floor-to-ceiling metallic fringe curtain for the kids to walk through at the club entrance

- Sign marking the entrance of the dance club. This can be a fun project for you and your child. Our version is shown below

- Spinning disco light or for the purists a mirror ball

- Fog machine. Inexpensive versions of these fun party favorites are easy to find at discount retails during Halloween

- Balloons will not be hung, rather we will use them for our version of a 'balloon drop'

Project - dance club sign: We constructed our sign on black foam board, with a simple message: "Madeline's Dance Club". The lettering was hand drawn with gold and silver metallic Sharpie markers, which contrasts well with the black background. Musical notes and stars were then drawn in to liven it up even more. As you can see by how worn it is, it got a lot of use even after the party! If you can place a black light nearby, fluorescent paint can be used for more pizzazz.

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