Here's the second installment of Erin's tutorials for her niece's "Olivia the Pig"-themed birthday party (find her tutorial for Olivia cupcakes here.) Man, what a great idea.

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I had the idea to make piggy ears for all of the kids to wear at my niece's "Olivia the Pig" party. I thought it would be the cutest thing ever to see a dozen 3-year olds wearing pig ears.

After dismissing the idea of using pink construction paper (too flimsy) I finally had the brilliant idea to use sheets of pink foam. The ears would stand up and be sturdy enough to last through the party. But I had no idea how I would get them onto the kids' heads.

I checked out headbands at our local craft store but they were pretty expensive to just be used for a novelty gift. Foam visors seemed like a good idea at first, and they were only a dollar apiece, but the more I looked at them the bigger and bulkier they became. Then I saw tiaras.

I knew from my extensive research on Olivia that sometimes when she daydreams she wears a tiara. Bingo. I called my sister to get her opinion on the idea and found she'd already purchased tiaras for the kids to wear so we just combined both our ideas into one.

I made an ear shape on paper and used it to trace a dozen sets of ears onto the pink sheets of foam. I carefully cut them out and put an inch-long slit vertically into the bottom of each. I then fit the slit over one arm of the tiara and folded the two sides of the ear in to meet the plastic arm, securing each side with a dollop of hot glue.

We decided they looked enough like pig ears to pass a 3-year-old's test. Or pink bunny ears. Regardless of what they looked like ,they were pretty cute. My sister also made a few using cheap, plastic headbands for the boys if they didn't feel like sporting a crown that afternoon.

She wrapped the bottom of the ears around the top of the headband and secured them with a safety pin. These were also adorable and had the bonus aspect of being slightly adjustable as you could slide the ears up and down the headband to get the desired piggy angle.

To add to all of the adorableness, we also made pig tails for the kids to wear. My sister came up with this one (and she says she's not creative). She bought pink pipe cleaners, (it's close enough to Valentine's Day that everything is pink now) wrapped them around a pencil to make them a spiral, removed the pencil and then secured the "tail" to the bottom of the kid's shirt with a teeny tiny clothespin. No glue involved in this one.

The tails and clothespins were small enough to not get in the way of the child sitting down, jumping in the bounce house or generally running around like a sugared-up 3-year-old. Only a couple of the kids wore the pig ears and tails, but I did see a few moms sporting a tiara. And of course, I wore one too.

It only took about an hour to make the ears and about five minutes to create the tails. The enjoyment, of course, lasted for hours. Check out the photo of all three creations above.