For my daughter's 8th birthday we used a butterfly theme. Invitations, plates and cups were bought at a party store all with butterflies.
As each girl arrived she picked a butterfly tattoo for her hand (came from a Dover book of butterfly tattoos). We then divided into 3 groups of 3 and one girl was picked to be the caterpillar. The other two girls wrapped her with toilet tissue as a cocoon. First one wrapped won! We took pics of the groups of three. Next the girls sat a table and using foam made butterfly windsocks. They used ribbon and laced a rectangular piece of foam already prepunched into a cylinder windsock. They tied ribbons to the bottom and one to hang it with and then glued precut butterflies and other pastel insects onto the windsock (foam bucket from Michaels). We used glitter glue to add sparkle to the insects and butterflies. When they were finished we played pin the spots on the butterfly (drawn by hand). For refreshments I made a butterfly cake with a single layer circle cut in half and the pieces reversed. I used various candies and string licorice to decorate. We also cut out ice cream ahead of time using a large butterfly cookie cutter and allowed the girls to decorate their ice cream with sprinkles. After opening gifts, the party ended with a butterfly piņata but b/c it was rainy we cut a trap door in the piņata and taped ribbons to the inside of the trap door. One ribbon was attached securely and would pull open the piņata. The rest of the ribbons would simply pull out. For favors to take home I had made small rectangular purses out of butterfly material that could be pulled closed with ribbon. They put their candy in the purses which also included small butterfly erasers, some lip gloss, butterfly pencils and ring pops. It was a fast paced two hour party and everyone seemed to enjoy the butterfly activities. Several of these ideas were taken from other butterfly parties listed on this site with a few new twists.
