Aurelia’s Cockatwo Party
To celebrate Aurelia’s second birthday I created a “cockatwo” party for her. Aurelia loves birds so I knew quite early on that we would have some kind of bird theme for her second birthday. The Cockatoo was a great bird to highlight as Aurelia enjoys seeing the cockatoos when they visit or fly past and it is one of the longer words that she was saying at this age. The playful pun on “two” also made it a sweet choice and with its bright yellow crest was also a nice tie in with the golden sunshine tones from her name.
Invitation Design by ELK Prints for Aurelia’s Cockatoo Birthday Party.
As an illustrator and designer I created the custom invitations and welcome sign to set the mood of the party for guests.
Welcome Sign to greet guests on arrival
Once the main artwork for the stationery was created I set about creating a whole flock of little watercolour cockatoos to use as cupcake toppers to decorate the vanilla cupcakes and lemon meringue pies.
Cockatoo iced cookies
As I also love baking I created and painted cockatoo gingerbread cookies using the edible paints from Sweet Sticks.
Cockatoo Cupcake toppers by ELK Prints
To add to our flock Nicole from Sugar Pop Bakery made the cutest little cockatoo cake pops for us.
Cockatoo Cake Pops by Sugarpop Bakery
As Aurelia also loves Bluey I was inspired to make the infamous Duck Cake but in the form of a cockatoo for the main birthday cake. During the construction process I absolutely sympathised with Bandit as I had my own moment of “Oh Duck Cake” putting this one together. Initially I had used the cake off cuts to make a more dramatic crest for the cockatoo but once covered in buttercream they were too heavy and caused the head to collapse. Luckily I had a Plan B in mind for how to do the cockatoo crest using lolly bananas which had just the right shape to mimic the head feathers of the cockatoo.
We held the party on the balcony of our home amongst the trees - a perfect natural setting for the party and styled the table simply with rustic timber boards and dashes of white and gold to represent the colours of the cockatoo.
For games we had bird puzzles, cockatoo puppets and a homemade Piñata in the shape of a cockatoo that Aurelia’s older brother helped to both make and smash at the parties end.
A selection of cockatoo and bird themed games were available for the children to play with
When creating a vision for a party I love thinking of little details that fit the theme - like serving seedy crackers to go with the cheese as they make me think of birdseed.
Overall this was a party for our family and closest friends to enjoy and celebrate. The weather was humid and rainy so we weren’t able to spread out across the whole deck. Instead we all ended up gathering around the table itself which had the effect of us all feeling like a flock of cockatoos grazing together.
As a creative it was such a fun theme to work with and wonderful to play around with all these cheeky cockatoos in creating a perfect day to celebrate my daughter .
CREDITS:
Photography: Stella Marie Photography
Invitations, Illustrations, Graphics, Styling: ELK Prints Design & Illustration Studio
