"Bad to the Bone" 80s-Inspired Halloween Party

Thanks to Oriental Trading Company for providing me with fabulous products for this post. All ideas and opinions found in this post are my own.

Bust out the Aqua Net, shoulder pads, and jelly shoes…we’re bringing the 80s back, baby!

This “Bad to the Bone” 80s-Inspired Halloween Party was so much fun to plan! Bright colors and abstract art elements + skeletons and pumpkins = an 80s Halloween Party that is totally rad…and bad…to the bone. ;)

Just about everything that was used to make this party come to life was from Oriental Trading. They have such an awesome selection of party goodies, and at such great prices!

I started off by decorating the table with lots of color and patterns. Teal plates sat atop black and white chevron dinner plates to add a splash of color, and pink napkins with black flatware finished off each place setting. To really made the place settings “pop”, I tucked Halloween candy inside cardboard craft rolls and created festive 80s-inspired party crackers to use as place markers. Not only did they look totally gnarly on the table, they doubled as party favors! Get the how to for these fun place markers here.

Oriental Trading’s skeleton print cups were an awesome fit for our “Bad to the Bone” theme (and actually inspired the dancing skeletons in the backdrop). I added some abstract washi tape to the rim of each cup to help it tie into the decor, then added some orange striped straws for a finishing touch.

What’s a Halloween Party without pumpkins? Pumpkins of different sizes served as the centerpieces for our table. They sat on top of an 80s-inspired abstract table runner that I DIY’d out of Oriental Trading paint chip circles, card stock, and pipe cleaners. It was, like, totally awesome, dude! Get the DIY here.

The backdrop for the dessert/favor cart just may have been my fave part of the entire party. How fun is that “Bad to the Bone” text with dancing skeletons?!! I whipped up a design that I liked, then uploaded it into Cricut’s Design Space. My Cricut machine cut the backdrop out perfectly, and so fast! I used transfer tape to transfer the text and images to the wall and keep the letters in position. If you’d like to replicate the look, the projects can be found in Design Space here and here.

To give the backdrop some color, I strung more paint chip circles with black baker’s twine, then hung it kind of randomly around the text. Card stock shapes and pipe cleaners filled in the empty spaces to make the backdrop look complete.

For a totally tubular favor table, Oriental Trading is the place to stock up! Most of their favor goodies are available by the dozen, which is the perfect quantity for a small Halloween party!

We served up bone-shaped erasers, bright plush skulls, bag-of-bones jacks games, and Halloween candy that we tucked inside little black pails.

With the help of the Xyron sticker machine, we transformed card stock shapes, paint chip circles, and ric-rac into stickers that we used to jazz up the favor containers. They looked sooooo totally rad, dude!!! Check out the DIY 80s-Inspired Favor Bucket Tutorial here.

Cupcakes were decorated with brush-stroke-chocolate fans, candy corn, skulls, and assorted sprinkles for the perfect Halloween treat. To give them visual interest, I displayed them on black and white popcorn boxes.

Such a “Bad to the Bone” 80s-Inspired Halloween Party, huh? If you decide to throw one yourself, I hope you have as much fun as I did!

Be sure to check out the DIYs for the Halloween Party Crackers, and 80s-Inspired Table Runner, and 80s-Inspired Favor Buckets to make your party complete.

Happy Halloween!

If you like these ideas, please "Like," "Pin," "Share" or "Tweet!"  Or, you can just shout it from the rooftops, if that's your thing.  Thanks bunches!!!  :)