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!
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.
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.
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!
A Vintage late 1940's Clue Game Board was part of the decor as well as various faux clue weapons.
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 the 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.
