20 ORIGINAL IDEAS FOR A BIRTHDAY PARTY

• Place two round sponge cakes on top of each other with a layer of cream or jam in between.
• Cover with buttercream.
• Cut out various cactus shapes from green marzipan or sugarpaste.
• Glue these cacti in a frieze around the cake.
• Add small sugar flowers to the top of some cacti.

• Turn a simple cake into an original menagerie by placing plastic animal figurines on top.
• Top tip: clean the figurines thoroughly before placing them on the cake.
• Add some festive hats and you're done!
  

Warning: if you add candles to the cake, make sure you keep them away from animals to avoid melted plastic!

• Make two yoghurt cakes, one larger than the other so that they overlap.
• Place a few drops of pink food colouring in the centre of a loaf of white sugarpaste. Mix to obtain a light pink colour. Divide the ball of sugar dough into 3 equal parts. Keep one part light pink. In the second ball, add a few drops of pink colouring to obtain a medium pink, and in the last ball a little more colouring to obtain a dark pink.
• Roll out the 3 balls of sugar dough into thin sheets. From these sheets, cut strips about 3 cm wide and as long as possible.
• Starting at the bottom of the cake, apply a strip of dark pink sugarpaste, gathering it like fabric around the cake. Work your way up the layers, using lighter and lighter stripes and overlapping them. Finish with a circle of light pink pastry covering the top of the cake.

Cupcakes are the perfect way for every child to have a little bit of a party. They also make for separate table decoration. Simply place the candles on the cupcake in the centre and the king or queen of the party will make their wish and blow out their candles, just like with a large cake.

This option works very well with doughnuts or cream puffs. Create a happy, festive atmosphere around the tea party.

Confetti is always a big hit with little ones and it's a fun activity to do with them beforehand. Using simple round punches or punches with channel shapes, cut out lots of confetti from coloured paper scraps. You don't have to do it all at once! 10 minutes each day, a week before the birthday, is perfect!

Place handfuls of confetti in small transparent bags sealed with making tape. Hand out a bag to each guest with their invitation card or at the time of the birthday cake so that everyone can throw a handful over the king or queen of this special evening!

If you're good at it, you can even organise a game to see who can collect the most confetti, so you don't have to clean up after yourself! A handmade birthday decoration and an entertainment in its own right!

If you too have torn your hair out trying to wrap a round balloon in traditional gift wrap, only to end up with the disastrous result of a big crumpled ball of paper surrounded by a kilometre of Bolduc... Here's a simple solution for artistically wrapping any gift, whatever its shape!

Take a pretty natural or coloured kraft bag. Using different small pieces of making tape, write "happy birthday" or the name of the child for whom the gift is intended, or draw a big heart...

Wrap your gift in coloured tissue paper and slip it into the decorated kraft bag. Close the bag with a small piece of Bolduc tied around the handles. As well as being beautiful and practical, this packaging is also reusable.

Use a compartmentalised tray for aperitif cakes, replacing the cakes with pearls.

The guests line up around the table. Each person has a rubber band and can make a friendship bracelet by stringing beads as they are drawn from the tray. At the end, everyone gives their bracelet to the guest seated on their right.

Magic drawing is based on the principle of wax crayons combined with watercolour or diluted gouache, as described in the first paragraph of this article. This is where drawing becomes a magical exercise!

Each child will draw on a thick white sheet of paper using white greaseproof chalk... So you can't see very well, if at all, what you're drawing... It's by passing a watercolour or left-wing brush over the sheet that the grease chalk drawing will appear!

This technique can also be used to uncover coded messages during a treasure hunt...