The boys were invited to a cool pirate birthday party for their friend that was turning 7. I know mom, and I knew that she had 'hired a pirate' to come and entertain the kids with games and crafts, followed by a pool party. I decided to give the birthday boy money that he can spend on an upcoming vacation. Knowing that it was a pirate party, sticking the money in an envelope just would NOT do! I found a small wooden 'treasure box' from the dollar store and decided to fill it with gold coin candy & small jewels, then I got to thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could actually give him buried treasure?
(Everything purchased is from the dollare store, except the play sand which was from Home Depot.)
My sons helped me put everything together and we had a fun family activity. The boys filled the treasure box with the 'real cash', chocolate coins & jewels and placed it in a small square planter. We then started adding sand and would throw in a few jewels & diamonds. The halloween stuff was already out and I picked up a small bag of skeleton bones, we added a few of them as well. To the top we added a skull and of course a pirate flag!
To make the scroll card I printed out our greeting on a piece of beige resume paper using Microsoft word and inserted a photo of each of my boys when they were dressed like a pirate for their schools literacy day last spring. I then tore the edges of the paper and pulled out my scrapbook supplies.
To ink the edges, I used an old color box Dark Brown, a new Dark Brown and an old Moss Green. As my color boxs' run out of ink I still keep them because they are great for aging techniques and adding subtle highlights. For those asking 'What is a color box'? They are small stamp pads that are great for edging along with a variety of other scrapbook techniques. Some dollar stores sell small stamps in various colours. (Color Box.) I then used my worn out Dark Brown and Moss Green and gently went over the entire page, front and back and that includes going over the text.
I then flipped my text/pictures over and did the treasure map on the back side - my oldest son loved helping me do the stamping! Once the stamps were on I connected the images with short lines using a fine black marker. VOILA! A treasure map to go with the buried treasure gift! (The cool pirate stamps are from Rusty Pickle. Unfortunately they have gone out of business, really too bad as they had a fantastic rustic, edgy scrapbook line.)
At the party all of the kids helped dig for the buried treasure and finding the jewels & skelton parts! Oh, and I made sure the gift was 'unwrapped' outside!
