A DIY The Amazing Digital Circus birthday party is a fun, colorful way to bring the show’s wacky world to life! With character-themed decorations, carnival-inspired games, creative food, and fun party favors, you can create an immersive celebration without hiring a planner.
I’d never heard of The Amazing Digital Circus before my daughter asked me to make it her party theme. Since this show is so niche, I had to DIY pretty much everything! (And I thought an Among Us birthday party was hard.) From the cake idea, printable decorations, and party favors to costumes and snacks, this guide has everything you need to transform your home into a big top of fun. Click a section to jump to it:
- Custom invitations
- DIY decorations
- Pomni costume
- Food and drinks
- Cake and ice cream cones
- Carnival-style games and ticket prizes
- Party favors and DIY Gangle masks
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Amazing Digital Circus Invitations
This was the first time I ever mixed AI with my own design skills! I described the entrance of the circus tent exactly how I wanted it, arched top and all, and it came out perfectly. Then in Photoshop, I added the party details, a customized logo featuring Lily’s name, the characters peeking out from behind the arch, and Pomni standing scared and exposed!
I used a black-and-white-checkered pattern for the reverse side, because that’s what the floor of the Digital Circus looks like in the show. I still mail out physical invitations, so I ordered 5×7 card prints from Mpix, my long-time favorite printing service.
Circus-Style Decorations
TADC isn’t a show with a ton of easy-to-find premade decorations – and the ones out there are lame. So I DIY’d pretty much everything for this party.
The Entrance (and Exit)
The first item to greet our guests is always my easel chalkboard, which helps set the tone for the party. While The Amazing Digital Circus isn’t a traditional circus, I did take the opportunity to mix a lot of the usual circus-y things with ideas pulled straight from the show. I don’t like liquid chalk, because I have ruined chalkboards with it in the past. Instead, I use dustless chalk, and I still get some pretty bright colors with it!
The front door featured a cardstock version of Pomni’s door plaque from the show. I traced it in Procreate and turned that into an SVG in Adobe Illustrator to use with my Cricut.
On the other side of the front door, I placed a cardstock Exit sign just like one seen in the show as well! It was also traced in Procreate.
And as guests left the party, they saw a goodbye message featuring Caine, the ringmaster himself.
Inside the Door
Just inside my front door is a half-wall that separates the entryway from the living room. I decided to cover it with rainbow-colored baby toys I found from secondhand shops, including a xylophone, mini marble run, bead-and-wires toy, and a number block clock. Why? Well, if you watch the show closely, the main part of the circus is filled with similar toys in giant form!
But once you looked straight ahead from the door, you saw a feature wall full of DIY decor! You can see the Sun and Moon, gold glitter star outlines, and Caine’s All-Seeing Eyes, all pulled directly from the show. I modified the TADC logo to say “Lily’s Amazing Digital Circus” as well. All of this was made with my Cricut Maker 3 and cardstock.
Every party features a letter board quote specific to the theme. If I’m being perfectly honest, I found this quote online and I’m not 100% sure Jax actually said it. But even if he didn’t… it’s definitely something he would say, right?
The Living Room
Around the corner in the living room were more decorations. A banner made of red, yellow, and blue glitter pennants hung below the mantle, with Mega Bloks in the same colors were built in a pattern on top of it – and you’ll notice these kinds of blocks in the show, too. Matching balloons floated on either side of the TV, which was of course playing The Amazing Digital Circus.
Red Balloon Animal Dogs
I was SO excited when I found these red balloon animal dog balloon weights at Walmart! You see these exact balloon animals in the same color in the show, just giant-sized.
Kaufmo’s Memorial
I didn’t make Kaufmo out of cardstock, but I couldn’t just leave him out of the party completely! I decided to set up a mini memorial of a framed photo with white roses on either side, just as it’s shown in the first episode.
Colorful Pennants
My living room is open to the dining area, so I hung a few more pennant banners on the drop-wall that divides them. There were red, yellow, and blue paper pom-poms hanging all over the kitchen ceiling as well.
The Kitchen
Colorful twisted streamers are a cheap way to add a huge visual impact! Plus, it always reminds me of a circus tent top anyway, so I definitely wasn’t skipping them for this party.
Circus Stripes
The kitchen table had a red-and-white-striped table cover, reminiscent of the tent’s stripes from the credits of the show. Well, the one in the show is actually yellow and red, but I couldn’t find one like that. Besides, this matched my popcorn boxes! I’ll talk more about the cake and treats further down.
DIY Circus Backdrop
Behind my server was the main backdrop of the event. I hung a black table cover as the background, and my mom helped me sew some red velvet material into mini theatre-style curtains. They’re held up with a cheap quarter-inch curtain rod and two jumbo command hooks – no holes in the wall necessary! The characters were all traced and converted to SVGs like the other decorations.
Extra Space
We have a large, open finished basement space that I like to decorate a bit, too. I used my extra banner, pom-poms, and checkered table cover, as well as some more balloons, to bring it together with the main floor.
I also asked my sun to build a larger marble run on an extra table we have in the basement. He did a great job! When watching the show, you’ll notice that the tubes that weave through the main circus hall look like a giant marble run.
Lily’s Pomni Costume
I don’t always get my kids a special costume or outfit to go with their party theme. But Lily wanted to be Pomni for Halloween anyway, which is only a couple of months from her birthday, so I knew anything I bought would still fit. So I got her this adorable Pomni costume that fit her perfectly! She was just too “embarrassed” to wear the hat in front of everyone during the party.
TADC Foods and Drinks
I like to have plenty of food options for guests, and there were plenty of TADC characters to name them after! Not only that, I specifically made my food choices based on what would go well with each name.
To fit the color scheme, I had red plates, yellow napkins, and blue drinking cups.
Ragatha’s Stupid Burgers
A box of 32 beef burgers is just about right to feed the number of people we have at our parties. And my husband is pretty good at cooking them so that they don’t taste cheap! We served them with buns, sliced cheese, ketchup, and mustard. I went to Kroger specifically for their Hamburger Dill Fast Food Style pickles – you can’t find them anywhere else! And I had another special ingredient…
Stupid Sauce
I couldn’t very well serve stupid burgers without the stupid sauce, right? Everyone got a kick out of this. It’s purple, just like in the Spudsy’s episode! But don’t worry – it’s just mayo tinted with purple food coloring.
Gangle’s Ribbon Sandwiches
I’m a BIG fan of pinwheel sandwiches, because they’re easy to make and versatile. I wanted these to look like they had red “ribbon” in them to mimic Gangle, but tomato pesto and pizza sauce was as close as I could get. They also had salami and sliced mozzarella in them, and they were so good!
Jax’s Deep Fried Spuds
The only “j” foods I came up didn’t quite fit the vibe of the menu. But, Jax seemed to enjoy the fry basket at Spudsy’s… so he got to represent the shoestring fries (aka McDonald’s style).
Bubble’s Berries
Veggie trays usually go uneaten, but I can usually get everyone to eat some fresh fruit if it’s convenient to grab. So I made dozens of individual cups of blueberries and quartered strawberries.
Zooble’s Ziti
“Z” is another tough letter to alliterate with food. But ziti is basically giant macaroni noodles, and virtually all kids love mac and cheese, so that’s what I made with it!
Pomni’s Popcorn
Honestly, there’s almost too many Amazing Digital Circus characters for naming food after! And I already had plenty of “main course” foods. So I set out a bowl of popcorn at the front of the buffet line people could snack on while they waited for the person in front of them to finish making their burger!
Caine’s Cookies
It’s always good to have a couple of extra sweet snacks available. The cake gets fewer mysterious holes in it that way! So I put out a bowl of soft chocolate chip cookies next to the cake on the kitchen table.
Kinger’s Safety Pillows
In the very first episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, Kinger is hiding under a huge pile of colorful pillows. They reminded me of after dinner mints (or party mints, depending on where you grew up)!
Digital Punch
Part of the “effect” of this punch was when it was first made, which I did right as guests were arriving. I filled the drink dispenser with two 2-liters of Sprite, then scooped an ENTIRE container of rainbow sherbet in it! They got to see the colors swirl and move around like “glitches” in the clear soda. But eventually, it turned to this lovely shade of pink.
Pro tip: set out your sherbet to thaw a bit before trying to scoop the whole thing out! Also, this punch was insanely delicious and was gone faster than any punch I’ve ever made (and I’ve made a lot).
Sparkling MPPEP
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a common faux drink name that shows up throughout the show. I took the screenshot from above, had AI clean it up for me, then printed it on full sheets of sticker paper to wrap around root beer bottles!
Mrs. Mildenhall’s Tea
Episode 3, “The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor,” is a rather spooky episode. Since Mrs. Mildenhall liked tea parties, I figured I’d make a custom label in her honor to go on my jug of Milo’s Sugar-Free Sweet Tea! (Lily was blown away that I could do this, haha.)
Pomni Digital Circus Cake and Ice Cream
Normally, my cakes are much more elaborate than this. (Not that I’m complaining – it was nice to get a break in the cake department!) But I shows Lily a screenshot from ep. 1 of Caine holding up a cake (see below) and asked her what she thought of it, and she loved the idea of making that her cake!
I had to guess at what it was actually made of. The final product ended up being an angel food cake (though I did not cut it into two layers). I don’t love Cool Whip, so I made homemade whipped topping to go on it using white chocolate pudding mix to stabilize it. The flavor reminded me of Birthday Bash ice cream! And Lily LOVES cherries, so of course that’s what I put around the top.
I used the same image of Pomni’s door plaque that I traced for the front door to make the cake topper. It just has “Happy Birthday Lily” added to it. The topper was printed on cardstock and taped to two popsicle sticks to stick in the cake.
Homemade Fancy Cake Cones
In episode 2, “Candy Carrier Chaos,” there are TONS of sweets throughout. I used what was shown as my primary inspiration for party favors, which I’ll get to later. But I also decided to make my own fancy cones like Baskin Robbins offers.
Usually, we just buy those individual serving ice cream cups to hand out with the cake. But since the cake was so easy, I went the extra mile on ice cream! I bought a box of Keebler cones, dipped them in melted almond bark, and covered them with rainbow sprinkles before they dried. I had cups on hand in case anyone didn’t like cones, and not a single cup was used! These were a big hit.
Fun Boardwalk-Style Games
DIY Balloon Darts
I REALLY loved the idea of the kids getting to play a real game of balloon darts at the party. The DIY process was long and entirely from my imagination, but it worked! I bought a cheap pack of two long styrofoam panels from Hobby Lobby and taped them together. But I bought real metal darts since they came with hundreds of balloons anyway, and I knew they’d chew up the styrofoam quickly.
So Josh found a huge piece of cardboard from a box at work. I hot glued it over the foam for some added stability, and also because tape sticks to cardboard way better than styrofoam. The ends of the cardboard were a bit longer than the styrofoam, which was perfect for punching holes to add twine for hanging.
Over the course of two nights a week or so before the party, I made myself comfortable in front of the basement TV and put on a whole season of a show. Using a handheld balloon pump, I inflated and tied off about 300 of the 500 balloons I had. My index fingernail bed was bruised from all the tying!
The morning before the party, I ran packing tape looped and backwards in strips all along the cardboard. This gave me a fully sticky board to work with. Then I stuck all the little balloons all over the tape. It looked great! And to my delight, everything worked perfectly. As the kids popped balloons, all we had to do was dig another balloon out of the giant bag holding them and stick it right back up there. Plenty of space was left on the tape after each pop to do this many, many times.
I had a roll of yellow tickets on hand to award the kids after their turn was over. Each balloon pop was worth 2 tickets, and each kid got to play two rounds with the dart board. I’ll get into what the tickets were for in a bit!
DIY Spin the Wheel Carnival Game
I wasn’t going to do this game originally, because I couldn’t find a carnival wheel in my budget. But as I was helping my mom go through a storage unit full of items that had been put up for YEARS, I happen to come across the colorful wheel above! It wasn’t attached to anything, but it still had the hardware for spinning, so I took it home.
My father-in-law is very handy with building furniture and woodworking, so I asked him to build me a sturdy base for the wheel to spin on. I know kids can get a little aggressive with activities like this. He nailed it with a big, heavy block base that was perfectly balanced. A simple zip tie was used as the wedge marker!
Each wedge had a different circus-themed activity the kid had to perform to earn the number of tickets indicated for it. These were the challenges I came up with:
- Ringmaster’s Riddles: I had several classic riddles printed out to pull from. They had different complexities as we had kids from a large age range at the party.
- Terrifying Tightrope: Don’t worry, it wasn’t dangerous! The kids just had to walk down a perfectly straight line while keeping a tiny beanbag on their head (no hands allowed).
- Popcorn Pop!: Bounce a ping pong ball into a bucket.
- Clown Noses: Get at least 3 of 10 soft red balls into the bucket from a distance. They got bonus points for each one dunked after the first three!
- Loopy Limbo: Limbo under a stick my husband and I held up based on their height.
- Mystery Box: Reach blindly into a container and guess what was inside. I used cold cooked spaghetti, cotton balls, and pinto beans!
- Balloon Balance: Keep a balloon in the air for 15 seconds. Bonus ticket for only using your head and elbows!
- Strongman Showdown: Hold two full water bottles straight out to their sides for 15 seconds. For younger kids, this can be challenging. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me!
Prizes for Tickets
At the end of the party, I set up a table full of prizes with a chart displaying their ticket values to purchase them. Lily got to spend first for one item, then we cycled through the kids and started over again until all the tickets were spent!
The most popular items were these unofficial Amazing Digital Circus character LEGO-style mini figures! They are surprisingly high quality. Gangle is probably the coolest one (and my son bought her!). Having given out 500 tickets to nine kids, I decided to price them at 25 tickets each. Every kid that wanted a minifig was able to buy one, and some got two!
I also found a cute Gummigoo plush, which was the most expensive item at 50 tickets.
Most of the other prizes came from the Dollar Tree and cost anywhere from 2 tickets for a piece of candy to 50 tickets for a play-doh set. Having small, cheap items is important to make sure every kid gets to go home with something, no matter how many tickets they won! Here are some of the things I had available:
- Taco Play-Doh set (50 tickets)
- Kitten Calendar Set (40 tickets)
- Reese’s socks (30 tickets)
- Rainbow pencil sharpener (25 tickets)
- Giant lollipop (20 tickets)
- Fun Dip (5 tickets each)
- Smarties (2 tickets per roll)
- Milky Ways (2 tickets each)
Amazing Digital Circus-Themed Party Favors
I didn’t find a lot of great ideas already out there for TADC party favor ideas. But that gave me an opportunity to get really creative, which I loved!
Popcorn Boxes
Everyone took home a popcorn box, inspired by IRL circuses! But it wasn’t entirely full of popcorn. The little bag of white cheddar popcorn on top each one was actually hiding lots more goodies! The kids’ boxes had a couple of extra items that the adults didn’t (grown-ups only got consumables, no toys), but below you can see everything that the kids received.
Inspired by the second episode of TADC, “Candy Carrier Chaos!”, I included various candies either seen directly in the episode or closely related, such as:
- Strawberry shortcake rolls
- Candy canes
- Fruity peppermint-style candies
- Fruit Chews
- Jaw Breakers
- Twisted lollipops
I don’t really love giving out “junk” toys, but these chattering teeth with eyeballs reminded me so much of Caine, I couldn’t resist! The backscratchers are at least practical, and each one had a tag colored to match that said “Zooble’s Spare Arm” to tie it into the theme.
DIY Gangle Masks
I made these masks just for the kids as well, and they were such a big hit! First, I traced Gangle’s comedy and tragedy faces and turned them into cut files. Then I measured my own kids’ heads to get average measurements for how big to make them and space the eye holes.
Each mask was about 7″ long and cut from craft foam, with the black parts attached using Felt & Foam Tacky Glue. I hot-glued on black elastic just above the level of the eyes. I briefly considered using red ribbon instead (because that’s what Gangle’s body is made of!). But it would’ve required manually tying the masks onto the kids, which wasn’t practical during a chaotic party.
Before You Go…
That’s everything I came up with for an Amazing Digital Circus birthday party! I hope it has inspired you, but feel free to steal my ideas as well.
If you’re interested in seeing how creative I get with other themes, here are some of my best birthday parties over the years:
This is all so adorable and totally inspiring for my kid’s future party! I’ll try to come back in the fall and let you know whether I pulled it off 🙂