In our family dark humour is de rigour and getting the three witches together for a little wine and some dark arts sounds delightful! It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (we know because we saw it in the leaves) and if this seems wrong to you, stop reading now. As it gets closer to all hallows eve, it seems the perfect time to tell you about that time Mum & I held a Ouija themed birthday party for my Sister. Mum and I pride ourselves on pulling together a great theme for a birthday. One that really suits the person and where they are at for that particular celebration. Ouija might seem like an unusual birthday choice but my Sister had baggage to lose and positive forces to work.
When one of we girls has a birthday, we always have a celebration that is just us three of us. We may have other plans but always the three. We plan bigger do’s for the rest of the family too. When we set up a theme it takes a while for all the pieces to come together and drop into a full blown idea. We add and subtract and shop and do until we feel it’s done. This is how we made a party with dark themes and a good deal of conjuring for our favourite mystic.
The Set Up
Ages ago, I made myself a tee with a Ouija board emblem using gold heat transfer vinyl and I wear it all the time! But I made up one exactly the same for my Mum and my Sister to complete the three witches vibe. If you want custom tees but don’t have the tech, try looking on etsy or calling around local embroidery shops. These tees will make an appearance later.
I wanted a huge Ouija board for display, I have seen actual commercial Ouija games in the US but not here in Australia. So I channelled the resources I had available to me! By which I mean, I had Mr Ask 3D print all the elements of a Ouija board and a planchette. I glued them all onto a big silver cake board to complete the look. Of course with all those raised letters, it isn’t functional but does make a statement as a centrepiece. The wonderful thing about custom making via 3D print means that ‘Happy Birthday Kylie’ was inscribed on the back side of the planchette. Very personal and ready for seeking your own haunting demons.
Definitely needed a voodoo doll for this! I made a voodoo doll using a free voodoo doll pattern I found online. I cut out two pieces bigger than the template from some white fabric. I traced the pattern onto the fabric and with both pieces together, I machine stitched around, leaving a stuffing gap. Not all that make stiches are Witches but all Witches make stitches. I cut around the stitched doll with pinking shears and then stuffed with some poly fill and closed up the gap. I added a button eyes and a stitch mouth in embroidery thread to make it nice and creepy. I thought it might need some shading with eyeshadow to look the part but this guy was definitely creepy enough! If you want a pre made voodoo doll I suggest Etsy.
Pins and needles! Of course, we needed pins for our voodoo doll and I had a few packets of cheap but pretty pins on hand (the bonus of having way to much sewing stuff is being ready for voodoo). I had this bigger box of matches lying around and by this stage Mr Ask was fully on board the Ouija birthday train, so he quickly spray painted the matchbox for me. Sometimes limited resources turn out something so much creepier than a proper custom job, looks like graffiti in a murder scene. We threw the pins inside and bam, you are ready to Mambo. You could just print something out and tape or glue it around a matchbox.
A crystal ball was a given! We needed to channel the birthday spirit and divine the future. Look into the glass and you shall see. Our crystal ball formed part of the décor and was also used as in our party games. There are loads of decorative ones on Etsy or eBay but it just so happened that Mum had this lovely little round crystal bowl that sat perched on a decorative brass stand – perfectly divine!
Every birthday girl has to wear a hat/glasses/crown so we know they are the birthday girl! We found this great black crown in Spotlight and knew that my Sister would love it. We weren’t going wild with decorations but picked up a few black paper flower/pom pom things (always at my $2 shop) to place around and Mum already had a bunch of slightly creepy skulls and other spooky ephemera around, some candles rounded the décor out. Since the big Ouija board was on a big silver cake board, we placed a cake board under the cake (even though it was in a pyrex, it’s my double drizzle lemon cake btw) and really small cake boards as coasters. Great way to theme on a budget! Silver and black themes are perfectly noir and just a little chic.
The Invite
Now we had the time and place mapped out well in advance and my Sister had no idea what the theme was or what to expect! We told her to expect further instructions the morning of our devilish engagement. Mum and I get quite excited about these little birthday afternoons and that always means we get into fancy details for our own amusement lol! So we whizzed up a little graphic to sent to her as an invitation. I made it up in Pic Monkey using an agate slice image as the background and I downloaded the image in the centre from KissPNG. When you are called to a meeting of the coven and given a dress code, you better believe there will be magic!
Party Games
This was a party that had to have party games! And as dark as we are, we wanted positive vibes only. So we took in turns to write our good wishes for my sisters future, read them aloud and then folded them up into the crystal ball. Stabbed a pin into the voodoo doll to represent the healing of wounds and a release from pain. Each wish and stab was completed with a vigorous, group ‘so mote it be’! And quite possibly a charge of champagne glasses. We do like to amuse ourselves! But really, such visible, physical ways to share well wishes and good intentions are showing our white witchery!. When we tired of our party game, the written wishes were collected into an envelope for reading next year. My Sister displays her Ouija board and well stabbed voodoo doll in her dressing room as a comforting reminder of magic working and to ward of those that doubt the power of three!
Make It Extra Spooky
Of course, if this was a Halloween party, you could totally amp up the spooky factor! For some more wild and witchy halloween games, there’s a great list from The Spruce here. We are so lucky that Mum has a collection of macabre artefacts and Mr Ask has 3D printed a number of bird, skulls and weapons for Mums collection. If you need to add some simple gore, you could add some DIY bleeding candles to the table and around the house. If you want even more, the best places I found for Halloween goods in Australia are costumes stores, Big W, Woolworths and Spotlight. None are particularly great but the big costume store near me has 1000 times more than anywhere else.
If you really want to make things grizzly, I have a few great and gruesome foods like Brain Dip with Bird Bones, Death by Chocolate Cemetery and my recent Cupcakes Blacker Than Your Soul. The preferred witches brew around here is champagne but you could scare your guests with Redrum Punch or keep to the classic Corpse Reviver. All in all this was the most fun birthday theme! I really wish I got more photos but I was busy interacting irl – sometime you have to put your phone down and enjoy each other’s company. But since we did have such a gloriously ethereal experience, I wanted to share our little party for the damned. I hope you have loads of ideas for an other worldly party for the dark arts. I hope your party is the thing of nightmares. Eat drink and be scary, the Witches of Maesbury witch you a Happy Halloween….
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