Little Mermaid Party Ideas – Lots of Disney Princess Crafts and DIY!

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I love Disney Princesses – I’m sure you’ve guessed that by now. I have a Pirates & Princess party board on Pinterest, that I used when planning Abby and her cousin’s birthday party this summer. I also have a Disney Fun board too, where I collect more princess ideas. We’ve had a Cinderella party, a Disney Princess birthday party, and we’re planning a fun princess tea party for one of these days when I get all of the little girls together.  I love sharing sneak peeks at the new Disney movies – {did you see that they’re making a  new live-action Cinderella movie? So excited!} And another thing I love is creating fun memories for Abby, like our recent The Little Mermaid crafting party.

As a work at home mom, I realized about a year ago that I was doing too much of the “work” part, and not enough on the “mom” side. So I now make it a goal to spend a few hours each afternoon just playing with Abby – whether it’s a trip to the park or museum, or just a super fun themed lunch and craft – I want to be sure I’m using the flexibility of my home-based job to enjoy family time. So to celebrate that fact that my all-time favorite Disney Princess movie is being released on Blu-Ray on October 1st {we pre-ordered it yesterday!} – I decided to have a fun day of “under the sea” crafting and treats. I bought everything we needed in one stop at Walmart {see some of the super cool Little Mermaid Ariel toys from our shopping trip} – including craft supplies, a new Ariel Mermaid dress with fins, a delish strawberry cake, and more. Easy peasy, and on a budget – my kind of party :)

The first thing we did was decorate a treasure box – Abby took one of those little cardboard style boxes, and covered it with lots of paint and sparkles and rhinestones. Because she’d need somewhere to hold all of the fun things we were going to make – like special sparkly shells, and under the sea bracelets. Little girls love having special “treasures”, right?

Next we pulled out some of the shells that we collected a few months ago on our trip to Cannon Beach, Oregon. It was Abby’s first time at the beach – and she loved it. She had a little sand pail, and she walked up and down the beach finding seashells for her mermaid doll we’d bought her. I gave her a paper plate and a bunch of sparkly paints, and a little bowl filled with some of those shells and rocks she’d brought home, and let her decorate them. She loved it! And they actually came out really pretty, didn’t they?

While she was working on painting her pretties, I made a few little clothespin mermaid dolls. I painted the bottom of a few of those old-school style rounded clothespins, cut fins out of sparkly craft foam, used rhinestones and fine-tip sharpies to make their tops and faces – then topped ’em off with a dollop of glue and some sparkly thread for their looooong mermaid hair. Aren’t they adorable? We’re in the process of finishing up Abby’s playroom makeover – and I think that these would be really cute in a little shadowbox frame on her wall.

Here are the other “Under the Sea” treasures that we made – bracelets made from pretty elastic string with colored stripes, that we covered with sparkling pony beads and ocean-themed silver charms. Abby just turned 3 a few weeks ago, and can string pony beads pretty easily – but needed some help with the charms, since they had smaller holes. If you have a little one and haven’t bought them string and pony beads yet – you are missing out on an amazing way to keep them occupied for hours, I tell ya. And it helps enforce learning skills like hand-eye coordination, learning colors and patterns, and more. Love it.

You can see here how much Abby loves her treasures…. She took such pride in painting, and stringing, and creating. We made extra bracelets too – one for her best friend, and one for grandma. We painted more little boxes, and filled them with handmade mermaid treasures…. Sure, they’re just beaded bracelets and painted seashells, but for the right person – it’s a REAL treasure.

With the new release of The Little Mermaid coming out in about a week, there are LOADS of amazing new toys on the shelves. Abby and I are already such princess fans, we actually had a TON of Ariel toys already. So, more than wanting to bring home some more toys, {although I did pick up a couple. I’m a sucker for princesses…} I was crazy-excited to grab a Little Mermaid dress! Abby has loved Disney Princess dresses since her Cinderella party, and I’m so glad to see her embrace a make-believe state of mind. She could not get over this set of fins…. “Look at my back – I can swim! I have two fins! I is a mermaid, mommy Wook at me swiiiiiiiim!!” Priceless.

To make her dress feel a little bit more authentic, {even though I’m sure I probably could have found a really great red-haired wig at Walmart, since it’s Halloween time} – I made a quickie DIY “Little Mermaid Hair” headband for Abby to twirl around in.

See? Isn’t this stinkin’ cute? A little bit of Ariel mermaid hair, for my little mermaid. I used cheapy red ribbons, {those .49 cent rolls} and tied them onto an inexpensive silver headband that I found in the kids section. Less than $2 bucks, and Abby had “pretend” Ariel hair to dance with. And I had a headband that could still do double-duty as a “regular” accessory later, when I untie the ribbons. {If you don’t care, just tie ’em on. If you’re crafty and know what I mean, just loop ’em on the way you do on a tutu. Then you can pull ’em back off when you’re done with dress-up.}

And what princess party play day would be complete without some special treats, right? We made under the sea tuna-fish sandwiches – regular tuna on wheat bread, just cut into star shapes. I used cookie cutters to cut fruit, veggies and cheese into shapes, for salad and bite-sized snacks. And of course – finished it up with this yummy strawberry Ariel cake! It’s just a basic store bought cake from the Walmart bakery, topped with a Little Mermaid Ariel toy, and sprinkled with pretty Wilton “pearl” candies. Abby thought that this meant that it was Ariel’s birthday, so we had to sing happy birthday to her :)

If you want to have a little peek inside our day – here’s a bit of twirling in the mermaid dress, a bit of showing off our under the sea treasures, and more. Get more inspiration on Twitter at @Disney, and on the Disney Princess Facebook page. And find a million more super fun ideas in the Under the Sea Playdate Pinterest board below too.

DISNEY PRINCESS UNBOXING VIDEO!!

If you’re here, I’m guessing that you are a Disney Princess lover too :) So, you HAVE to check out these super amazing PLEY subscription boxes. They now have Disney Princess boxes!! You can see a bit of Abby’s favorite box, and all that comes in it, in the video above. I priced all of the items that were in it, on Amazon and the Disney Store – and this box was a seriously amazing deal. Plus it’s so fun that it’s always a surprise of which princess is coming next, there are exclusive items, and the box turns into a really cool DIY castle, tower, etc to play with too. We can’t say enough good stuff about this!!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post – be sure to pin it, tweet it, and share it. You can also follow #DisneyPrincessPlay on Twitter and Instagram for even more fun ideas too. And if you’re a fan of The Little Mermaid too – leave me some comments below with your favorite parts of the movie, or fun party ideas. I love hearing from you guys!