For my 7th annual Nancy Drew Halloween party, I chose the classic Nancy Drew book, #30 The Clue of the Velvet Mask and paired it with my favorite detective game, Clue - The Velvet Mas-CLUE-Rade. Nancy Drew fans and members of Nancy Drew Sleuths traveled from as far as Canada to attend the party and the accompanying Drew-O-Ween activities on the next day. To set the stage, I chose the scene from Velvet Mask where Nancy is dancing with the masked thief and that became the window silhouette complete with bats flitting about.
The setting was Drew Manor, where Nancy had invited her friends to a masquerade party as a ruse to help catch the Velvet Gang, a gang of thieves who were stealing at parties around River Heights. One of the gang had infiltrated the party and was planning to kidnap Nancy and steal the Velvet Mask she'd found at one of the parties. So, everyone had to play detective to figure out - Clue style - which suspect, which room, which weapon. Suspects were taken from Velvet Mask and they had 6 in the book, so it perfectly matched the Clue set up. It was so much fun, we had a great time!
Inside the house which was Drew Manor for the party, guests feasted on lots of goodies baked by Hannah Gruen and recipes and snacks from some of Nancy's friends and family including - George's Monster Munch, Carson's Chicago Mix Popcorn, Togo's Tortilla Rolls, The Chief's Chips & Salsa, lots of candies, Nancy's Chocolate Cupcakes, Hannah's Rice Krispie Treats, Bess's Yummy Reese's Peanut Butter Cookie Cups, Shadow Ranch Slow Cooked Brisket, Pinto Beans, The Nickerson's Nawlins Potatoes, Eerie Green Chile Chicken Enchilada Casserole, Thrilling Tomato & Avacodo Salad, and The Cornings Cherry Chiller Punch. I created treat picks using various images from suspect silhouettes and images from the Cameo version of the book to old time Halloween masked ladies to our mystery icons and Clue fingerprints.
I even decorated my collection a bit with pumpkins, skulls, and "mice" were frolicking around!
Nancy Drew Halloween Trees were set up featuring various Nancy Drew ornaments, reproduction old-time Halloween mini paper mache buckets, eyeball ornaments and silhouette paper ornaments. Loved these!
Keeping with the Clue theme, we had garlands of Clue weapons including poison and Nancy Drew's nemesis - chloroform!! Also our mystery icon silhouettes from our Nancy Drew Printable Party Kits. A rat was attempting to steal a Rice Krispie Treat Cupcake and a vintage Clue game board from the late 1940s adorned the table. One of our sinister suspects Burt Snecker - a.k.a. Professor Plum was among the decor wearing the Velvet Mask Nancy found after thieves had raided the masquerade party!
Masks were used to make centerpieces for tables including some vintage Halloween ephemera images of masked ladies.
Our Suspect Wall was a Rogue's Gallery of our 6 Clue/Velvet Mask suspects and a banner was created out of vintage Nancy Drew book pages from an old falling apart book. Everyone's goody bags were sitting on the table too--one side featured he Velvet Mask from the cover with it's creepy eyes, the other was a Clue fingerprint.
Inside were a set of orange notecards with a bevy of spooky scene internal illustrations from Nancy Drew books
I created, a test tube of Hannah Gruen's Hot Cocoa mix and the recipe
card to make up your own, a "poisonous" bag of treats, a JOL game, Velvet Mask button, and a light up JOL or Skull ring.
Guest arriving were greeted by our Skeleton Suspects decked out in their Clue colors. Tags featuring their Velvet Mask character names and alias Clue suspect names.
After dinner, everyone played Clue and were given a card after 3 were placed in the solution envelope. So you had to go around to everyone at the party and make suggestions to figure out what 3 cards were the solution to the mystery - which suspect had infiltrated the party, what room they were hiding in and what weapon they brought to use on Nancy!
A Clue board was set up on the wall as a backdrop for photos and everyone took photos with various mystery theme photo booth props and the clue weapons. Then we went out side and took some eerie photos on the porch as everything was all aglow.
Here's a sampling of some of the neat gifts given out at our Gift Exchange, including the Hollow Oak tree, the Velvet Mask lantern, the Red Gate Farm bucket, and the hollowed out mystery Velvet Mask book.
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