• Stencil invitations: Cut out your own stencil or buy one from a craft shop. Fold a piece of paper in half and stencil the design on the front. Write party information inside. Keep the design simple and include a package of crayons along with the invitation, so the invited guest can colour the invitation as soon as he receives it.
  
  
• Magic Pens: Using an invisible-ink pen, draw a picture in the middle of a sheet of white paper. With a regular pen, write around the edge party details and instructions to colour the middle of the paper with the enclosed pen. Enclose a pen that reveals the invisible drawing.

• Set up a room just for arts and crafts; cover the floor with plastic or newspapers. Or host the party outside.
  
  
• Provide easels, tables, and white paper for creating artwork and crafts, along with lots of craft materials, such as markers, safety scissors, glue, fabric scraps, sequins, glitter, stickers, coloured paper, and so on.
  
  
• Hang kids' art projects around the room at their eye level.
• Decorate the party table with art supplies.
  
  
• Make place mats to look like artists' palettes.

• Give the young guests smocks made from old white shirts (you can buy them cheaply at a Charity Shop) dotted with felt-tip pens and smeared with paint.

• Dough Designs: Give the kids Play-Doh or baker's clay (dough made with flour, salt, and water) and have them shape the material any way they like. When everyone finishes, have everyone guess what each dough object is supposed to be!

• Finger-Paint with Pudding: This is a fun, safe, and tasty way to finger-paint. Prepare some chocolate and vanilla instant puddings according to package directions. Divide the vanilla pudding into parts and tint each a different colour, using food colouring. Set bowls of pudding on a table covered with large sheets of slick paper. Have kids spoon a small amount of pudding onto the paper and finger-paint with it!
  
  
• Decorate T-shirts: Give each child a white T-shirt, or request on the invitations that they bring a white T-shirt that can be decorated. Cover an area of floor with thick cardboard from the sides of large boxes. Insert a thinner, smaller piece of cardboard inside each T-shirt (this will keep paint from running through to the back). Tape the shirt and thin cardboard down to the heavier cardboard, keeping the front surface flat. Have kids decorate their T-shirts with non-toxic fabric paints. Allow the T-shirts to dry and let guests wear the shirts home at the end of the party.

• After the painters finish finger-painting with pudding, serve them fresh bowls of chocolate and vanilla pudding to eat!
  
  
• Bake or buy large cookies and let guests decorate them any way they want, using tubes of icing, gels, and sprinkles.
  
  
• Make Patchwork Sandwiches: Ask the bakery to tint bread four colours: pink, blue, yellow, and green. Make sandwiches with the coloured bread, then cut them into triangles. Arrange the triangles on a platter in a patchwork design.

Palette Cake

1. Bake a round cake following a favourite recipe. Cool.
2. Frost the cake with white frosting.
3. Decorate the top of the cake to look like an artist's palette - use coloured frosting to make circles of "paint". Set a clean new paintbrush on top of the cake.

• Let the young artists keep their decorated T-shirts.
  
  
• Make extra baker's clay and give each guest a portion to take home.

NOTE: All party bags should be age-appropriate and safety tested.

• Invite an arts-and-crafts teacher to lead the group in some creative activities.

• Use safe, nontoxic age-appropriate materials.
  
  
• Protect your party room from spills.