They Are Crafty: Pirate Birthday Party

My youngest boy decided that he wanted a pirate birthday. I think he changed his mind for about two months and finally picked a theme.
I decided to get the invitation done and this is how they turned out.

He said he wanted a black pearl cake so I was on the hunt for different ship cakes. I stumbled across about 5 different cakes that I like and got some ideas from all of them.
This how our cake turned out.

Sorry for the bad lighting. We used two round 9" cake pans and one 13"x 9" cake pan. We put the 13"x 9" cake on the bottom and stacked the 9" cakes on the front and back of the ship. For the water we used blue buttercream and also mixed some white buttercream at the end to make the waves. This was probably one of the easiest cakes we made.
For the party favors I just used a brown paper bag and ripped the tops off. I then placed the pennant on the front of the bag. I found these at http://www.cottage-industrialist.com/. I used these pennants for the decor by the cake. I also printed these cute pirate hats and eye patches.

We also had some pirate nuggets with little pirates in them. The pirate guys are made of tootsie pops with a black piece of cloth wrapped around and glued like a bandana. The black cloth is a black dish rag I got at the dollar store.