A paintball party was the theme my eldest son chose to celebrate his 13th birthday party this year! Yip, we have a teenager in the house and so far so good! What a journey it has been but this post isn’t about me getting sentimental on you because that is a blog post in itself! Rather, it is all about how to throw the best paintball party ever!
It is actually a wonderful choice of party because unless you have an obstacle course backyard and a selection of paintball guns, then you will need to host this party at a Paintball venue. And yes, that means, for you the parent, a clean home for you to go back to afterwards!
I hosted this party on my own as my husband was away on business and even then, it was still so easy. I also asked parents to please drop and go so that I could minimize the amount of catering I needed to transport along with my 3 kids!
For candy and snacks, I bought mini green buckets and placed stickers with each child’s name on. These were such a hit! Everyone knew exactly where their snacks were and could take home what they didn’t finish.
What to do for a paintball cake? The easiest thing you can do is make a cake (or get it made like I did), and insert some printable/s into the cake (see below). You could, of course, also throw some M&M’s on top or any other roundish-looking candy to make it look like paintballs. I have also seen vanilla cakes, with white frosting and then colorful drips coming down from the top. This could also be fun!! Another option would be to offer an ice-cream cake. Much like the donuts, ice-cream cakes almost never go to waste.
Chocolate cupcakes were used in our photoshoot of this party but for the actual party we just had the main birthday cake. The cupcake toppers add a wonderful dash of color to the table if you decide to go with them! I also threw in some donuts for the actual party – these seem to go down better than the cake itself and I may consider doing a donut cake next time with a few cupcakes on the table. I find that if you have cake as well as cupcakes, it is just too much cake and a lot of it lands up going to waste. This is especially true if you are just catering for kids. If you have parents staying at the party then by all means, have both as they will likely be eaten.
The kids generally build up quite a sweat during a game of paintball so I made sure I had individual water bottles for each player as well as some other beverages. Our paintball party printables include water bottle labels just to let you know! I also have a beverage dispenser which is extremely useful to have for parties or any other function for that matter. So if you are considering buying one, I would highly recommend it, you will really get your moneys worth of usage over the years. I added a printable sign to the dispenser saying “hydration station” which helped tie it in to the whole theme.
The theme colors were black with splotches of green and the colors worked well in the “target” banner hanging on the front of the table, as well as the name banner above the table on the background. We did a set-up of this party in my office with a black background as well as a white background and I think both came out nicely but I think I preferred the black overall as it made the colors pop a little bit more. We just used a black piece of fabric and draped it over a wooden stand that we keep for backdrops. If you don’t have a backdrop stand you will need to get creative and string up some fabric. But, if you can’t, don’t stress! Honestly, the kids attention will be drawn to the table and they will not know the difference!
For decor we added jars of actual paintballs to the table! This worked well for a photoshoot but obviously if you have kids around, they could easily mistake these for candy, so eeeek, health and safety alert! Rather just seal the jars with tape if you need to or alternately, add green or yellow or whatever round shaped candy you can find to the jars! This is definitely your safest bet!
Other decorative printable items that were easy to add to the table, were the round signs on sticks that say “Ammo Boxes”, “Game On” and “Eat Paint”.
As favors for a paintball party, you can add green candy, paintballs or anything small and green to a test tube or clear plastic bag and attach a favor tag to it (see pic below). I actually didn’t do favors this time as I felt 3 games of paintball was generous enough and we already supplied a lot of candy too. It depends, sometimes I do favors and other times I don’t. I also feel that the older kids aren’t as “hungry” for the favors as little kids are, they don’t really seem to expect it as much as the little kids.
In the pic above, just below the cake, you can see I added a label called “power paintballs” to a box of candy treats which you could easily give out as favors to guests as well. These labels are referred to as Treat Labels in our list of paintball printables.
What fun these boys had! Please take note of the red-faces and sweaty mops of hair! Must have refreshments!
And let us not forget the paintball party invitation itself you guys! Fun, bright and completely editable!
So as you can see, there are so many possibilities for a paintball party and the decorations can be created very easily! To help you create your theme, I have summarized the printables we have below:
We have the following paintball party printable party decorations, labels and tags:
- Name and Paintball Target Banners
- Cake Topper
- Cupcake Toppers
- Favor Tags – These include 2 inch “Ammo” Tags and Traditional Shaped Favor Tag as seen in image above.
- Round Decorative Signs (Eat Paint, Ammo Boxes, Game On)
- Water Bottle Labels
- Signs eg. Hydration Station
- Gable Box Labels (not seen in this set-up)
- Round Name Stickers for Boxes or Mini Buckets
- Candy Treat Label (“Power Paintball Label” as seen in photo in blog post) – This can also be used as a favor tag
- Editable Invitation
