Thinking of throwing a mermaid birthday party for your little one? Here are lots of mermaid birthday party ideas, activities, decorations and party favours to get your planning started. Our little girl adored this theme for her third birthday this year (and I loved getting it ready too!)
When Miss 3 declared she wanted a mermaid birthday party earlier this year, I admit I was really happy with the idea of all the decorations and activities we could do with that theme! She later decided she wanted Frozen-Elsa-mermaids which was a tougher call, but we managed to squeeze lots of Elsa themes into her birthday itself, which she was happy with.
Here are all of the mermaid birthday party ideas that we came up with, not all of which I managed to photograph (as is the manic nature of parties, as I’m sure you can relate!)
Decorations and food:
With all our our birthday parties, I tend to collect lots of cardboard boxes to make the signs and decorations with. Cardboard is such a cheap, versatile and effective medium to use and lends itself really well to being painted, cut and turned into wall hangings or 3D constructions.
I cut some large pieces into shell shapes and used oil pastels and glitter glue to add some details. These were then propped around the rooms as part of the backdrop. I cut another large piece into the shape of an old piece of wood, and painted “mermaid lagoon” onto it, which stood at the back of the table, draped with strings of plastic pearls.
I ordered lots of sea shells, star fish and pearl necklaces from Amazon and scattered these around the place, and found some lovely ceramic shell-shaped dishes to use on the tables for display and serving food.
We used these strings of tropical fish to hang between the rooms and swathes of turquoise netting
to look like the ocean.
I found this lovely treasure chest pinata and we filled the front opening with gold chocolate coins for one of the games. Right at the end of the party we changed it from being a decoration to being the final game of piñata itself, and they scrabbled to fill a plastic cup each with all of the bead necklaces, gold coins and sweets that were hidden inside.
Everything else we used was themed turquoise blue, from paper plates and straws to plastic cups and napkins. Most of these were sourced from the supermarket, eBay or Amazon stores.
The girls had all painted some star fish and fish shapes (also cut from cardboard) and these were placed on table tops and inside the blue netting which hung around the room.
My lovely friend made and decorated these gorgeous number 3 butter biscuits using this same recipe that we made these cookie pops with. Another lovely friend made us some Little Mermaid cupcakes with edible pearls on the icing, and sugar paper character pictures.
The cake was a simple sponge cake covered with roll out fondant icing. I experimented with using watered down Wilton icing colours as water colour paints to paint directly onto the white icing, and it worked well, especially since the theme was watery! Onto that plain, blue base I simply cut out some seaweed shapes and stuck them around the sides, along with a number 3 on the top surrounded by edible pearls.
Then we found a small mermaid toy to sit on top of a tiny cardboard plant pot, and I added more real shells and draped with another string of pearls to finish. Around the base I crushed some digestive biscuits (I believe Graham Crackers are a very close match in the US) and sprinkled these to represent sand.
[ Find the Mermaid Costume here]
The games and activities:
I bought some tiny shells with holes punched through them for threading bracelets and necklaces with. Then we had a go at making clay pinch pots decorated with more shells and acrylic gems too. These looked lovely and were starting to dry by the time the party was finished.
Outside we played a treasure hunt game for wrapped picture books and then musical islands, where the children have to jump onto island shaped pieces of paper when the music stops. Each round, another island is removed and a child is out when there is nowhere for them to land. The last one (or two) children left are the winners! We played the usual pass the parcel too, which is always a favourite, and finished off with the piñata.
When it was time to go home the children had a blue paper bag with some treats, cake and little notepads, pencils and fish stickers as well as a cellophane wrapped mini bucket containing homemade ocean play dough with real shells and plastic gold coins.
If you would like to see our other BIRTHDAY PARTY IDEAS we have done lots now! Hopefully you will be inspired by some of the themes, activities and crafts we have tried.
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