Fright Night Expo- Mad Hatter Party

Last Thursday the Birmingham Convention and Visitor's Bureau teamed up with Go Pro to host the annual Fright Night Expo.  There was a Mad Hatter theme and Birmingham's top hotels showed up with their brightest and best!

We were excited to join the Tutwiler Hotel in their booth with our Cool Shots Photo Lounge.  For their booth, they went with a tea party - Mad Hatter style!  There were giant teacups and tiny cupcakes, bright pinks and oranges accented with teal,  and the cake by Culinard which was absolutely a masterpiece!

We wanted the Cool Shots Photo Lounge to match with the rest of the theme, so I went to work creating a psychedelic beaded curtain and some tea party necessities!  Here are some pics of the process with a few notes of how everything came together.

First,  I started with two different sizes of styrofoam balls for the beaded curtain and painted them in the bright colors of the booth.  With styrofoam, you have to be careful with your paint choice because some paints and glues will actually eat away the styrofoam.  I went with a basic acrylic craft paint, which also worked well on my teacups and saucers.  I just grabbed these at the local thrift store (REUSE!)  I also added a light coat of Mod Podge to seal in the paint and add a nice gloss.

I layed out the pieces of the curtain first to make sure that everything would work and added in some flower heads to add a little garden appeal to the tea party theme.  The flowers were a little droopy, so I also Mod Podged them to keep the petals nice and straight.   A little fishing line and some beads were used to create each string and space apart the items.  I used the remaining flowers in a silver teapot (also a thrift store find),  a cool glass bottle with 'Drink Me' tag, and some other items I found in the bright colors as the finishing touches.  

The Tutwiler created a cool framed 'looking glass' that the guests stepped through to enter the Photo Lounge.  It was such a great element to tie everything together!  I was really happy with how everything turned out and so was the rest of the crowd - The Tutwiler Hotel's booth was voted #1 for the event!  We couldn't have asked for it to turn out any better!

Thanks so much to the Tutwiler team for having us!