DIY: 80's Themed Inspiration. Centerpieces + Candy Station + Bar Menu with Signature Drinks

We love the 80s! Check out some inspiration from a party we threw last year. These DIYs are inexpensive and simple to do. Hope you enjoy!

 

1st DIY:

To make these we drank lots and lots of Mexican Coca-Cola out of these adorable 8oz bottles for months! Well we didn't drink all of them ourselves! We made sure to host lots of family barbeques and get together where our family and friends could help us out! This type of Coca Cola bottle is not impossible to find here, we've seen this at places like Target and Wal-Mart. The only thing we didn't like, the price tag. Each bottle will average about $2.00 each in a 6-pack. We were lucky to find cases of these on a trip to Tijuana, Mexico at a "Wal-Mart type" chain called "Commercial Mexicana". The average price per bottle in Mexico was about 50 cents. Not to mention Mexican Coke is made with pure sugar cane! 

For this you'll need glass soda bottles and spray paint in the color of your choice.

This is what the bottles looked like before getting sprayed.

Here's the silver metallic spray paint we used that we purchased at Home Depot.

Let them dry over night after spraying them!

We made lots of these! To make them pop as centerpieces, we clustered about 5 of these at each table and topped them with single stems of flowers.

Here's what the seating area looked like with all of our centerpieces!

We added Rubix cubes we found at the Dollar Tree and 2 votive candles for a little something extra.

2nd DIY

80s Themed Candy Bar and Backdrop

To make this backdrop, we spent about $10.00. We found party streamer rolls at Dollar Tree and decided to go with a green, black, and purple color scheme. We used duct tape to secure each row of steamer to the top of the cement wall (which is not visible - sorry!). But the way we taped them, by folding the duct tape so that we ended up with 2 sticky sides, no one could see the tape!
We cut and cut and cut and taped and taped and taped. This did take us about one hour to complete, but we prepared this area a day before the party. So that helped! The 80s themed cutouts were made by hand using different cardstock we had on hand. The sweets sign we made by spray painting a piece of ply-wood we had on hand with the same silver spray paint we had for the bottles and then painting "sweets" using black acrylic paint.

The day of the party we placed the candy we purchased at Jack's Wholesale Candy in LA. Here's a link to their website. http://www.jackscandyandtoy.com/ 
Their store is AMAZING! It's a great place to also find candies in a specific color if you are going with that style candy bar.What's also nice is that if you ask a staff member, they will give you a list of decade themed candy starting with the 40's all the way to the 90's - very useful when figuring out what to buy for an 80s themed party!

Here we used blow pops, sixlets, sour gummy worms, lemon heads, pop rocks, razzles and fun-dip. Guests loved the decor and loved the candy!

3rd DIY:

Bar Signage and Signature Cocktails

For this signage, we used an old cork board we had from a previous party that we used as a seating chart. We lightly stained the border with some black paint and then covered the cork with black cardstock. We used a Cricut to cut out some letters in various cardstocks we had.

We wanted to use drink names that would remind our guests of 80s pop culture.  We also had glass soda bottles of Fanta. Costco is a great place to buy large quantities of sodas in glass bottles.


Hope this inspires you if you are planning your own 80s themed party or any other event!