80's Party Decor Tutorials

{For the full 80's Surprise Party post, click here.}

I threw Mike a surprise 80's birthday in April for his 40th birthday.  I went a little outta control with the decor--and I've had some requests for tutorials which I learned while trying to DIY most of my 80's decor!

As you can see above, by raiding my parents' house and Mike's parents' house, along with the local thrift store, I was able to round up a bunch of 80's games and toys.  This made for some super fun decor all around the kitchen and living room where the party was held.  I found lots of 80's VHS movies and cassette tapes too which were perfect!  At the local thrift store I was able to find 16 Candles, Big, Ferris Buhler's Day Off, and Dirty Dancing, all on VHS, just to name a few.  I also found cassette tapes of Flashdance, and "Thriller" (Michael Jackson)!  I pulled out my old Cabbage Patch Kid which I almost gave to the thrift store just months before (luckily I didn't!).  Twister, Operation, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and Battleship were just a few of the games I had out for decoration.  My Little Ponies, Slinky's, and Rubik's cubes were a few other toys I rounded up and decorated with.  I even tracked down an old Millennium Falcon which one of my good friends had in her son's old toys.  Of course I had to have out my old NES Nintendo gaming system!  (Unfortunately I was unable to round up an old Atari, that would've been pretty sweet!)  

The Twister mat looked great hung on the wall and worked for a great photo backdrop.  A Twister mat could also double for a great table cloth!

Of course, I also thrift-shopped for great 80's party wear.  I found one of my old scrunchies from the 80's at my parents' house and threw that in my hair.  I bought a tee shirt clip at the party store, and found some neon green leggings on Ebay.  I scored the absolute perfect oversized neon-coral colored shirt with jewels studded on it, complete with SHOULDER PADS.  I could not believe how I scored on that one.  I also found ACID WASHED JEANS for my husband at the local thrift store too.  They were a little large, but still worked with a belt.  I bought him an Atari shirt a few years ago at Walmart, so that was perfect for the occasion.  I bought Mike's hat at Forever 21 and his jacket and my mini-skirt at the local thrift store.  None of those were acid washed yet, so I had to do that myself.  

 I also acid washed tee shirts for both my sons.

The acid-wash process was actually really fun and super easy.  There are multiple methods for doing this, but I just chose the easiest and quickest one I could find.  

DIY ACID WASH

1) Be sure to wear rubber gloves so the bleach does not eat your hands!  I forgot this step...

2) Fill a spray bottle with pure bleach

3) Completely wet all the clothes you wish to bleach in clean water

4) Lay clothing out on a flat surface preferably outside in the sun -- Because it was springtime, I lucked out on that one.  I laid out an old towel on the deck and laid all the clothes on top of that.  I know this process can also be done in the bathtub if weather is not permitting, but clothes will bleach better and faster if laid in the sun.

5) Spray clothing with bleach.  You can do this in many different ways.  Misting evenly will give a lightened speckled look to the clothes.  If you drip small amounts of bleach on the clothing it will look dripped on like my youngest son's red shirt.  On the blue shirt, I opened the spray bottle and used the tube on the sprayer to drip and move bleach around.

DON'T OVER-DO.  Wait 15-20 minutes between treatments to let it fully dry on the fabric to see how bleached the clothing is before bleaching more.  Darker clothing items seem to work the best.  HAVE FUN!

I rounded up a bunch of old cassette tapes and spray painted them neon colors.  (I also did this with a few VHS tapes too which I just had sitting around on shelves with the other decor.)  I didn't spray paint the clear cassettes with the geometric shapes on them because they totally screamed the 80's to me already!  

I tied ribbons to the tapes and strung them up from the living room light and fan and also from the light in the entryway.  I discovered stringing the ribbon through the small holes in the top of the cassette tape worked better than stringing the ribbon through the two large center holes.  Stringing them through the small top holes gave the tapes better angles to hang them at also.

 I also made a cassette tape "banner" which I hung from my mantle.

To make this I just looped a piece of yarn through the holes in the cassettes.  To keep the cassettes in place and to keep them equidistance from each other, I would take the yarn down through the left hole, then back around the left side and down that same hole again.  Then up the right hole, back around the right side and up the right hole again then down the left hole of the next cassette keeping a good space between the two cassettes, back around the left side and down that same hole again--up the right hole, back around the right side and up the right hole again, then down the left hold of the third cassette, and so on.

By far my favorite piece of cassette tape decor, though, was the cassette tape fringe curtain I made.

For the curtain I just hot glued cassette tapes to a long strip of cardboard which I had cut to the width of the doorway on which I wanted it to hang.  I glued the tapes alternating the colors and the angles at which they were hung.  Then, just before the party, I pulled the tape out of the cassettes so as to make a fringe curtain in the doorway.  There is A TON of tape in each cassette, so I pulled it out of all 3 spaces on each cassette (if you look at the yellow cassette on the left hand side in the above picture, you can see how the tape comes out of 3 places).  That way, each cassette had six strands of tape coming out of it (because each place you pull it out of will be double).  I don't know if this is making any sense...you may have to actually experiment on a cassette to understand...  I pulled all of the strands all the way to the floor.  With time, the strands will pull out and get caught on peoples' clothes, etc but it was still super cute (and that happens with any kind of fringe party curtain you would purchase too).  

Another thing I used a lot of in my decorating, were vinyl records.  There was a plethora of vinyl records at the local thrift stores, so I hit up each one and got the best 80's albums I could find.  I used a lot of the album covers, and a few of the actual records to decorate the walls.

I cut some of the covers in half so I could hang both the back and the front of the covers on the walls.  Some of the albums folded out into a larger poster--those were my favorites--especially Olivia Newton John's "Physical" album, pictured above on the left.  :)

Olivia Newton John, Donny and Marie, Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers, Air Supply, Barry Manilow, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, Pat Benatar, The GoGos, Jane Fonda's Workout, and Cyndi Lauper, are just a few of the 80's albums I was able to purchase from the local thrift shops.

I also typed up some classic 80's slang words and phrases in a bunch of different 80's fonts.  I printed them extra large and cut them out and glued them onto neon poster board.  I then cut out the poster board making a large border around the words, and then used those words as wall decor too.

With the actual vinyl records, I made other kinds of party decor.  My brother-in-law ordered all the siblings a clock kit online and found us each a different Disneyland record (their family is super into Disney) to use as the back of the clock.  The kits came with the clock movement and the hands to attach to it.

All we had to do was sand the center hole in the record to make it a little larger so the piece of the movement which connects to the hands could fit through the hole.  Then we attached the hands

Snap a battery in the back part of the movement and set the time, and you're good to go with your very own vintage retro vinyl record clock!!  :)  These clocks would also be cute with some stenciled or vinyl numbers on the record!

One of my favorite pieces of decor was the dessert stand I made with records.  I was so excited with how it turned out.  I made it up all by myself (I'm sure other people have done something similar before), but I was super proud of myself for actually exhibiting a little bit of creativity without using the help of Pinterest!  :)

DIY VINYL RECORD DESSERT STAND
Supplies Needed:
Hot glue, neon spray paint, 4 wooden candle sticks, wooden topper, wooden base, 4 regular sized vinyl records, 2 small vinyl records, and one piece of cardboard to place between small records to attach to candle sticks and topper (as the hole in the small records is too large)

I purchased the 4 wooden candle sticks at the craft store, along with a little wooden topper for the stand too.  I also bought the flat round base to go underneath.  (Sorry I don't have a visible picture of the base.) I attached the candle sticks end to end with hot glue in sets of two.  I then spray painted the candle sticks, topper, and base with neon spray paint.  Then I hot glued the records together in sets of two (so they are sturdy enough to hold food).  I actually couldn't find two of the smaller sized records, so instead, I glued the one record I had to a piece of cardboard that I had cut the same size as the record.  (I also spray painted the cardboard black so it blended in better).  If you do use two smaller records, be sure to glue a piece of cardboard between the two in the middle because the hole in the middle of the smaller records is larger than the candle sticks so there is nothing to glue the candle sticks onto unless you glue something inbetween.  Then glue one set of the double large records to the base.  Next glue one of the double sets of candle sticks a top the records.  Glue your next set of double large records atop the candle sticks.  Glue on your second set of double candle sticks atop the second set of records.  Then glue your double small records (with cardboard between) atop the second candle sticks.  Last, glue the topper atop the whole thing!

Last, but certainly not least, I made a bunch of vinyl record bowls.

 Making the bowls seemed like it'd be difficult, but it was surprisingly easy, especially with a few tips I learned along the way.

DIY VINYL RECORD BOWLS
Supplies:  Records, Oven, Cookie Sheet, Round Oven Safe Nesting Bowls (I found 1 qt and 2.5 qts to be the perfect sizes), and gloves or hot pads (optional)

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 200°F.

2) Place oven safe bowl upside down on a cookie sheet.  (I used a cookie sheet for easy removal from the oven).
3) Center record over bowl.  (Keep in mind the side that is up while on the bowl will be the bottom of the vinyl record bowl--so place accordingly.)

`3) Place cookie sheet with bowl and record on top of it in oven and bake for approximately 2 minutes.

4) After about two minutes, check on record.  It should be just beginning to bow down.  --If you wish to mold bowl completely by hand, (for a more precise and wider look, you may want to remove the bowl from oven now).

5) If you want more of a bowl shape, continue cooking for about one more minute until bowl bows on all sides like the below image.

6) Mold the bowl -- If you are molding the bowl by hand, just manipulate the record into the shape you prefer.  The less wobbly it is, the easier, although if it's too hard, it won't mold properly.  If it's just barely flexible enough to mold, it is very easy to get a precise shape.

If you prefer a more rounded bowl-like shape, I came up with the perfect solution.  Most of the tutorials I saw came out with skiwampus looking bowls like the one below.  I found two things to be the best solution to that problem.

First, be sure to use bowls with rounded bottoms rather than flat bottoms.

The first time I tried this out, I used the bowls on the right.  This is how my bowl turned out.

Not awful, but still not quite as nicely shaped as when I used the rounded bottom bowls.

Second, when you get the bowls out of the oven, to shape, carefully press a larger bowl over top of the smaller bowl and record like so...

Here's is a view the other direction so you can see how the bowls are nesting together.

For the nesting bowls, I used a 1 qt. bowl on bottom and a 2.5 qt bowl on top.  This was the perfect fit.

This is what a bowl by hand can look like

and one using the double nesting bowl method

I even tried doing a couple over a cup rather than a bowl.

They turned out very skiwampus but were fun for setting out the dinnerware in.

Now you'll have a darling set of vinyl record bowls perfect for a party, or gifts, or whatever else you can come up with!

Just be sure to only put dry products in your bowls as there is a hole in the bottom, and only carefully wash the bowls by hand as the labels will begin to peel otherwise -- and they're the cutest part!

Now you're all ready for a 

TOTALLY RADICAL 80's PARTY!!