Anatomy of a Rock Star Birthday Party Part 1: Creating Backstage Passes

We finally finished our backstage passes for Autumn's Big Bash.

YES, I am fully aware the party is in 3 days, I am a bit of a procrastinator (ie. invitations the night before she needed to give them out). In the next few days we will be crafting up a few more things, so stay tuned.

This is the one we printed for her party guests:

Since we created them as a .jpg file we could add them to a word document to print them 4 up on the page and get them any size we wanted. If you want to use our design, click the one below you will be taken to the BLANK version (it doesn't have the word bubbles). I WILL be posting our other creations for you to add to this if you want to create a whole party.

If you have never used Picnik before NOW IS THE TIME. It's free, easy and fun. I created the background using a mix of Picnik, Paint and Word (2007 version). Instructions on making this background from scratch (so you can add your own photo instead of using mine) are HERE. It was a drawn out process, if you have Photoshop (which I currently do not on my laptop), you could probably whip this up a lot easier. The instructions are easy to follow but it took us about an hour to get all the pieces together.

What to do (using Picnik):
1. Save the .jpg file to your desktop and open Picnik.
2. Upload the photo and click the 'create' button
3. Choose 'Add Text' from the tool bar along the top
4. Add the date of your party in the white space and whatever other words you want
5. Choose 'Save and Share', save the updated file to your desktop
6. Arrange, print and then have your child sign the white space at the top (unless you added their name using Picnik earlier)
7. You can laminate them and punch holes to add a ribbon or lanyard, or if you want to get really fancy you can get some badge holders at Staples or Walmart to slide them in.

Now if you are an impatient crafter like me, you can always just print them as is and write the date in. Done and done.