Shrek Birthday Party Decorations

You can find a large selection of Shrek-themed party supplies and decorations at Celebrate Express. if you can’t find any, or if you’d rather create your own, here are some ideas:

Recreate Shrek’s swamp
Clear a space in a corner of the room and lay crumpled green tissue on the ground to make a swamp area. Slit green garbage bags into long strips to create fringes. Tape them to the walls or hang them from the ceiling and doorway so they hang down like a curtain of slimy weeds. Pick up some plastic creepy-crawlies from the dollar store: lizards, snakes, bugs and frogs. Arrange them around the edges of the swamp. You can also make simple balloon frogs by blowing up green balloons and taping them to two green webbed feet make out of construction paper or cardboard. Draw a frog-face on the balloon with a thick green or black felt pen. As a final touch, add a few of Shrek’s “Keep Out!” signs. You could even play swamp sounds on a boom box to add to the effect. You can find downloadable frog calls on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife website.

Make a medieval village
Make a banner at the entrance to the party room that reads, “Welcome to the Kingdom of Far, Far Away!” Cut medieval arched window shapes out of black construction paper and stick them to the walls. Cut “cobblestones” out of light and dark brown construction paper and tape a cobblestone path through the party room. Make medieval notched flags out of green, purple and orange construction paper and tape them to wooden dowels. Tape up official “proclamations” everywhere, with scrolled tops and bottoms and elaborate gothic lettering: “Hear ye, hear ye: the Kingdom of Far, Far Away hereby proclaims today to be [birthday name]’s birthday!” Decorate the village with green, purple and orange balloons and streamers. Play medieval music, or Shrek soundtrack music, or a mixture of both.

Other ideas:
Make Shrek ears: Cut strips of green craft foam for the headband. Roll up cones of green craft foam to make the ears and staple them to the headband. Wait until each child arrives before safety-pinning the headband closed so that you can adjust each band to fit. Make them look like these if possible!

Face painting: Pick up a pot of green face paint (you can find it online at Celebrate Express) and give each child a green face to match their Shrek ears. You might want to find a helper to do this for you, as you’ll be busy with other party arrangements. This is an easy face-painting job. Just take a big makeup sponge and give them a few swipes of green to turn them into instant mini-ogres.