Creative Minds

A trend now is to have "painting" parties where each guest is set up with a small canvas and easle to paint along with an instructor who walks them through making a painting. I have seen them themed for famous aritsits like Monet. It would be kind of cool to theme someting little boys would like-perhaps Munch's 'Scream'.

Are you sure you don't want to host it at your apartment? If there are only a few kids & you said you don't have a huge family & list of friends, right?
I would clear out the main living area and cover the walls and tables with plain white paper, that you can buy by the spool and/or a couple plain white topvsheets and hang them up and let the kids go crazy with markers/washable paints...wouldn't that be cool?

I envision the kids walking into a room that is completely covered (walls & floors) with all white sheets, helium latex balloons w/the strings cut off so they were all over covering the whole ceiling....and then you just cover them with smocks, have them take off their shoes and direct them towards the pile of art supplies!!! Brilliant!!!
*You could put something on the invitation about wearing clothes you don't mind getting dirty and how they are invited to a very 'colorful celebration' or something to that effect? How exciting would that be?

You could cut out holes in black trash bags for make-shift smocks and literally let them go 'Art Crazy'!! As long as you covered the floor and everything that you couldn't move out of the way with something(thrift store sheets or a tarp or something)I don't even think it would be all that messy? At 9y/o most kids follow directions pretty good. I bet it would be so much fun, be relatively inexpensive to pull off, very unique & then your son would have a great mommento from his special day, party favors would be easy b/c you could let them take home whatever section they worked on, ya know?

My boys are also very creative, and one year for my youngest son we had a few people over and painted t-shirts. It was very inexpensive. I went to Target and bought a few packages of white Hanes t-shirts in a few different sizes, and then went to Michael's and bought fabric paint. The kids (there were only 6 or 7) wore my husband's old t-shirts as smocks so they wouldn't get paint on their clothes. They had a great time, and the shirts turned out great! Some of the kids wanted the shirts to be shirts they could wear, and others wanted them to be sleep shirts. That was several years ago, and my son just asked last weekend if we could paint Christmas shirts to sleep in. We're going to do that as a family over the Thanksgiving break just for fun.

Happy Birthday to your son, and have fun whatever you decide to do!

A few fast thoughts:

A children's museum or science center often do overnights with activities. We did it with a youth group I run, and it was terrific.

A recycled crafts party using cereal boxes, toilet paper rolls and scraps of fabric and an adult supervised glue gun and make puppets and sculptures.

We did an art party with a round robin so at the end each kid did several art projects using different mediums. Could you borrow a friend or relatives home to set it up at their place?

Spoon and clay puppets - then put on a puppet show etc.

Good luck, have fun make good memories together.

Can you ask suggestions of the art teacher at your son's school? Is there an art school close by? An art museum with helpful employees? A children's museum? I have no idea what's around you; I'm only thinking that this past summer we took our granddaughters to a children's museum in a nearby city. It turned out to have a focus on creativity, and the first thing I thought was, "What a great place for a birthday party!"

Try to find an art school. They might have a time they can provide a space and a student teacher. Look on the Internet and you can find great drawing videos for children. Probably utube, also. "drawing" is really not that messy or big deal. Provide some real drawing charcoal pencils and get some freezer paper or a real pad of drawing paper, some "smears" and you have a party! Can you tell I like art? Some kids will like it and some won't just like anything else but you will have provided them a unique experience. I might cover the table with freezer paper taped down so they can draw there also!

Do you have a Color Me Mine or similar to you? My 10 year old just went to a birthday party there and had so much fun. They pick a ceramic piece (she picked a plate), they design and paint it, and then leave it to be glazed and fired. Her plate came out beautifully!

Do you have a Color me Mine by you?

Find a local art school/class. We have a lady close to us who teaches art and it's amazing how much she can teach the kids in an hour....and how much they complete!

Color Me Mine is way too expensive for what you are getting!

Also, have all of the kids paint their palms and have each put their hand prints on pieces of paper that he can keep with a note from each of them next to their hand print.