Thomas cake

DIY Thomas The Tank Engine Themed Birthday Party – Frugal And Plastic Free Way!

In Life by eva.katona@yahoo.com10 Comments

Bobcat turned 4 in March – so I’m a *little* late writing about his birthday party, but here we go. He’ s a huge Thomas The Tank Engine Fun so when I asked him what kind of cake he’d like to have he said: chocolate cake with Thomas on the top. We held it in a local pub called The Grove (if you’re around make sure you check out the fab beer garden) and had a professional entertainer from  Mr. Marvel and the kids absolutely LOVED it! It’s always a hit and miss kind of thing with party entertaining and I thought the children might find the magic show a little boring and it would be a little old-fashioned, but that was not the case, not at all. The chap was very good with the children and really funny. (They surely cover London and Surrey, but I’m not sure about other areas.) 

Since he wanted a Thomas themed cake, I naturally wanted to design the whole party around Thomas. So I had a little browse on Pinterest but didn’t really find what I was after so I came up with a few ideas. Hopefully this post will help you if you want to organise a Thomas The Tank Engine themed birthday party.

thomas party

DIY Thomas The Tank Engine Themed Birthday Party – Frugal And Eco-Friendly Way!

Basically, you need to work colour coordination if you don’t want to pay for themed party kits. So buy all the balloons, party bags, table covers, etc in three basic colour: red, light blue and blue. I’ve found a little online shop specialised in eco-friendly party ware, called Little Cherry  and I’ve ordered quite a few bits from them. I googled for biodegradable balloons and that’s how I found them.

biodegradable balloons

Cakes, biscuits and cupcakes

I had a local cake maker who made the cake and the biscuits for the party. whenever it’s possible, I shop local. It’s great to have local people you can count on and it’s important for me to support my local community.  

I made the cupcakes and decorated them with vanilla and chocolate flavoured icing. I bought some ready to roll icing in baby blue colour and used a star shape cookie cutter. With baby blue cup cake holders they looked quite cute I think:

icing stars

icing stars

icing starsicing stars

 

And this is what the cake and the cookies looked like:

thomas cake

Thomas cookies

Party bags:

It is still quite challenging to build a decent party bag without crappy plastic toys, but it’s possible. I bought a big box of small Thomas The Tank Engine books and memory game cards as fillers as well as paper bags in all three theme colours: red, blue and light blue. The big box of books only costs around £18 and had 35 little books – which isn’t expensive at all. They were a big hit with the children!

Thomas books

Thomas snap cards

Thomas party bags

 

Other party decoration bits

  • stripy paper straws (in theme colours)
  • mini, stripy, vintage looking, cinema-stye popcorn boxes
  • light blue paper table covers
  • light blue paper Happy Birthday banner (reusable)
  • card board cake stand for the cup cakes (reusable)
  • light blue paper napkins

Thomas party


 

If you want to check out my other frugal and DIY party designs, start here: DIY Hey Duggee Theme Birthday Party

Comments

  1. Ahhh this is so cute! I never thought of theming a party as a Thomas the Tank Engine theme! Perfect for kids. Looks like you put a lot of thought into this x

  2. This looks like such a fab party to attend and the decorations fit the theme perfectly. I love the cookie and popcorn idea which I know my kids will love as well.

  3. Oh my gosh. I never knew you could get biodegradable balloons! My nephew had a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday party (although no cute themed biscuits) last year and there was so much plastic! I’m going to suggest these balloons and the paper goodie bags for his party this year.

  4. You’ve gone though a lot of effort to make this party something special – I bet the kids really enjoyed themselves! Great work! 🙂

  5. It looks amazing and I love the fact it’s plastic free I’ve been trying to lower our plastic usage in our house reciently so defiantly going to keep these in mind when I plan baby bears next party xx

  6. I love that you made this happen plastic free. Great work!

  7. Looks like he had a great birthday, my boys used to love Thomas x

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