Holding tea parties in style

Posted on | December 26, 2011 | 2 Comments

Another guest post I wrote recently was about tea parties and how to make a shabby chic cake stand! The original post appeared on the marvellous Red Ted Art blog written by Maggy, but here’s a slightly updated post for you today.

What you’ll need to create your own cake display stand:

3 plates, each a little smaller than the other

2 sherry glasses

1 tube of glue for china and glass

1. Source your plates and sherry glasses – charity shops or carboot sales are great for this. Choose three plates that complement each other – perhaps all floral, or all blue and white. The top tier of the cake stand could even be a small bowl rather than a plate. Our plates and glasses cost us a total of £3.

2. Use the china glue to attach the two sherry glasses to the underside of the smallest plate and the medium plate, taking care to position the sherry glass in the middle (or near enough) of each plate. You might find it helpful to place the glasses on the plates first and draw round them so you have a guideline for where to place the glue. If you’re after a quick fix, hot glue will work, but it won’t make a strong cake stand that can be reused lots.

3. Once the glue is dry, assemble the stand by gluing the top plate and glass to the middle plate, and then the middle plate and glass to the bottom plate. Once again it can be useful to trace the position of your glass on the plate with a pencil before applying the glue.

4. Leave your cake stand overnight and then hold a tea party!

As regular readers of Playing by the book will know, we’re all about having fun with children’s books so here are some super books and bookish things to whet your appetite for a tea party:

Miss Spider’s Tea Party By David Kirk

Let’s Have a Tea Party! by Emilie Barnes, illustrated by Michal Sparks

Flossie Crums: The Fairies Cupcake Ball by Helen Nathan

Mud Pies and Other Recipes by Marjorie Winslow, illustrated by Erik Blegvad

Shaun Tan’s mural entitled The Tea Party – a mural produced for the children’s section of a library in the Perth inner-city suburb of Subiaco.

5 Mad Tea Parties over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (the best picture book blog I know)

Lynne Chapman’s Monkey’s Tea Party

We’re also fond of dancing at Playing by the book so here’s a selection of lovely music to jiggle to whilst you have your tea party:

Tea For Two performed here by by Nat “King” Cole

To Have A Tea Party by The Wiggles

Tea Party by Frances England

Cookies and Milk also by Frances England (you can listen for free here on Zooglobble’s blog)

Tea Party by The Jimmies (you can hear the entire song for free here on The Jimmies’ Myspace page)

If you’ve any favourite children’s books or songs about having tea parties, I’d love to hear about them.

Category: Baking/cooking, Birthdays, Food

Comments

2 Responses to “Holding tea parties in style”

se7en
December 26th, 2011 @ 1:15 am

Oh tea party fun is just perfect for this time of year!!! Here are our favorite tea time stories: http://www.se7en.org.za/2010/10/30/se7en-tea-time-stories and tea party games: http://www.se7en.org.za/2010/10/29/se7ens-serious-tea-party-olympics
And craftiness:
http://www.se7en.org.za/2010/10/31/se7en-tea-party-crafts

I’ll stop already Happy Holidays to you all!!!
Zoe
December 27th, 2011 @ 7:58 am

Wow, what a lot of goodness in your posts – thanks so much for sharing. I love your tea party olympics – think I shall be borrowing quite a few of those ideas. And your teaspoon creativeness? Amazing! Thanks, Se7en