Our ex-retail sales manager’s daughter turned the big 18 – so her mum put together a Flower Power Inspired Party to celebrate this milestone birthday.

One of the goals for this party was for it to be all DIY. From learning to bake and making the cake, to all the decorations, even to making all the furniture including a bar! Here’s how she did it.

Party Furniture

The furniture was the biggest job of this party. We started with a whole range of different sized wooden pallets and after many weeks of planning, prepping, painting and assembling we ended up with a bar, some chairs and two tables on wheels.

For the amazing colours for the table tops and bar top and to get them to match the party colours, we used Vintro Chalk paint, and our wonderful friends at Dooney and Daughters set us up in their paint area with the paints that we needed. Don’t the colours look so vibrant!

The Outdoor Chill-ax Party Zone (for all 18 year olds!)

We wanted the outside to be a place for the 18 year olds to be able to go to – away from the adults 😉 Once we had the furniture, we even made the cushions to match the theme. We did this by buying cheap pillows (yep standard pillows), cut them in half and then made cushion covers from…can you guess?… teatowels!

And viola – we added a marquee tent with fairy lights, some yellow marble balloons, some rainbow orbz balloons (all air filled and tied up with curling ribbon) and the scene is set.

The MOST Important Bit…The Cake!

The next biggest job was making the cake. Tracey had NEVER made and decorated a cake before, so this was the next challenge – so after a lot of learning and practicing she was ready to make the cake. The base of the cake was 2 x 8“ cakes on top of each other to make a VW, and the top layer was a psychedelic marbled 6“ cake using gel food colouring to create the marble effect. Once the cakes were baked, we made a range of fondant flowers in different colours to decorate the base.

As this was her first “official” cake, she was very nervous, so decorated the base of the cake on a plain silver cake board. To transfer the heavy cake to the final board, the grass cake board, was very scary, as the cake was now quite heavy, but the King Cake Lifter was so easy to use and took all the “scary” out of moving the cake to the board.

Add mint marbled candles and wooden number cake toppers and the cake was complete. And we used a white cake stand from our hire range to display the cake.

Food and Drink

We made other food ideas as well, here are just a few of them. Here you can see the daisy cupcakes – vanilla cupcakes with buttercream and sprinkles, and a fondant flower on the top. They looked amazing on the white daisy cupcake stand from our hire range.

These polished wooden rounds from our hire range helped set the theme for our other food. These salmon and cucumber rounds looked great on them. And mini meatballs were also a huge success. Serving these in our mini catering cubes with wooden cocktail forks made them delicious and easy to eat.

And you can’t have a 70s flower power theme without hedgehogs!!!

Our alcoholic punch in the large glass drinks dispenser from our hire range looked bright and colourful and they hold many litres of drink, so we were able to just set it up and leave it.

Photo opportunities for those all-important insta pics

In terms of decorations for photo opportunities – a 70s vinyl wall was one of the photo backdrops. We scoured many second hand and op shops for some of the best 70s records to make this backdrop.

We also made a streamer wall with coloured streamers to match the theme colours and a gold foil curtain for some sparkle. Simply set up a length of fishing wire, throw the streamers over and cut to length, then throw them over again. Next, cut up the gold foil curtain and add some sparkle through it. Lastly, add large helium filled number balloons and it was a perfect photo backdrop.

The setup – setting the scene

Our jumbo balloons in the party colours with ivy garlands were absolutely perfect around the food table and at the front entrance. And the little balloon flowers tied at the base was a great finishing touch.

An addition of a mini balloon garland and our silver air-filled letter balloons to spell out Flower Power was perfect for the food table. We also used the rustic crates and polished rounds from our hire range to add to the more rustic flower theme of the party.

What started off as just a dream of an idea by the birthday girl and seemed like quite a huge job ended up being so much fun to put together and I learned so many new skills from cake baking to party decorating to making furniture and more. Flower Power Baby!