Book Launch Party!

Guess what! I wrote a book! I bet you haven’t heard anything about that around these parts, ha! I’m just so excited that it is a real book, and not a figment of my imagination or a mean joke. It’s for real, a real book! And a fun one, complete with ONE HUNDRED kid craft tutorials all with pictures! Great present idea for families, kids, or teachers, just sayin’. (More on the book writing process here.)

Lemme get to the point, I really wanted to share the book launch deets with y’all today! It was a drizzly, overcast Saturday morning, and so many people showed up to craft! It was kind of amazing. And, y’all, I signed and sold tons of books! I wasn’t event  going to bring books, and Andy told me that was ridiculous. For once, he was right 😉 The book launch was in the backyard of the cute Toms Roasting Company in Austin. Lucky for me, Toms backyard is adorable, so I didn’t really have to do much in the way of decorating, and there is a cute little shed that I set up with donuts, books, and things that really shouldn’t get wet.

(Photos by Sarah Schiffman)

Me singing a book, ahh!

Donuts, anyone?

And then outside, there were picnic tables set up with 3 different crafts from the book. You can see the cactus dot painting with q-tips going down here. There was also a lot of toilet paper tube creatures being made! After I finished writing the book and realized I loved toilet paper roll creatures, I started a series on the ol’ blog where I am going to do the whole alphabet. You can see tutorials for animals A-M here! The 5 creatures from the book are not on the blog, they are extra special creatures, ha! You can see a few of them in the pic below!

A giant thank you to Scotch Brand for sending loads of washi, glitter, and metallic tape for crafting and goodie bags! Tape is such a fun craft tool for all ages, lots of designs and colors and my fave, no mess! (I spy a Max baby crawling around in the background.)

And Max brought me his toy car to watch while he ate donuts and played with everyone in the drizzle outside!

One of my very favorite parts of the party was all of the kids brining me presents of crafts they had made from the book! Here is a wee part of my craft collection…

I brought a lot of the original book crafts to the party to give to kids! I’m petty sure they all got new homes…

Lots of sweet blog friends came out to celebrate! Here’s Miranda and her cute crew from One Little Minute! Thank you to Kristen, Amy, Amy, Tisa, Lani, Jennifer, Hildara, and Elizabeth! And Heidi, who wrote a fun post and is giving away 2 books today!

This is an ornament version of the Monogram tape + cereal box craft on page 80 in the book. The kid crafted versions are way fun!

The kids are ornament crafting away!

There was a lot of playing going on too! This rod iron door was a big hit. You can also see my little yellow book singing hut in this picture.

Oh and how sweet is Lucie girl?! She’s standing in front of some nature art made by one of the cute book models, Summer Joy. Nature is a chapter in the book, and nature names is a craft on page 216! I love that kids use their imagination and make the crafts their very own,

Finished kid crafts inspired from the book! Heidi’s son made a Minecraft toilet paper creature and the little girl made a toilet paper version of her mama, how cute is that?!

Thank you again to Toms Roasting Company for letting us use your space, Munchkin for donating bath crayons to goodies bags, and Scotch Brand for the kid craft supplies! Oh and of course a giant thank you to YOU for hanging out with me on this ol’ blog!