Throw a Travel-Themed Party on a Budget with the Reuse Centre

Planning an event and short on cash for decorations? No problem! You can pull together some travel-themed party decorations with a little bit of crafting and some of the awesome resources from the Reuse Centre.

For this event, I decided to make wall decorations, a banner and a travel-themed signpost. I also printed and cut out “passports” that served as the door prize entries. I’ve also seen similar passport-style invitations and place cards for weddings.

The banner:

1.  First, I collected a stack of old maps from the Reuse Centre. These had fallen out of some donated National Geographic magazines. I also grabbed some poster board remnants and some leftover tissue paper (to be used for wall decorations later).
2. Using a standard word processing program, I printed out the letters I would need for my banner—one letter per 8.5x11 page—and cut them out.
3. I traced these letters onto the maps (varying the colours and types of maps) and cut them out.
4. I glued the map letters onto poster board and cut these out as well.
5. Once I had all my letters, I laid them out face down on the floor in order, careful to get the spacing and alignment right. I used the grooves in my wood floor as my guides.
6. Next, I stretched two lengths of monofilament (fishing line) over each set of letters (I created my banner in two sections, to hang one above the other). I taped the monofilament down to the floor.
7. Using a glue gun, I attached the monofilament to each letter.
8. I hung my new banner! It may shift or drape when you hang it. Gently pull it taut to straighten it out.

Voila!

The wall decorations (seen above and in the image below):

1. I started by selecting travel-themed graphics from a simple Google search.
2. I printed the images onto paper and cut them out to create basic shapes
3. Like the letters, I traced these onto maps and cut out out the outlines. For the moment, I left the interior cuts (e.g. the car windows) alone.
4. I glued the shapes to poster board and cut them out. The board made the images more stable. I used a craft knife to cut out the interior shapes for those images that had them.
5. I cut small pieces of coloured tissue paper and glued them to the back of the shapes with interior openings to create a “stained glass” effect.

Here are some of the other shapes I made.

To fill in blank wall space, I hung up all of the extra maps.

The signpost:

For the arrows, I used an old pack of wooden stakes that I hadn’t gotten around to using in my garden. For the post, I used a scrap piece of 2x2" lumber. Rather than building a support for the bottom, I opted to put the post into an old Christmas tree stand, disguised with a piece of scrap black fabric.

1.       Paint the post and stakes your desired colours.

2.       Choose locations that are relevant to your event or theme. Use Google Maps to find out the distances from where you are.

3.       Paint the locations and distances on the stakes in the correct directions.

4.       Pre-drill each stake for two screws (to avoid splitting the wood) and then screw each stake to the post. I opted to put stakes on all four sides, but you could easily do one or two only.

5.       Set the post in the Christmas tree stand and straighten it. Tighten the screws and cover the stand with fabric.

Where's your next destination?

Bon voyage!!

- RuthAnn (volunteer)

All photos provided by RuthAnn