BIRTHDAY BANNER REVISITED

As you know, the birthday banner was "taken home accidentally" (which means thrown away) by my colleague when we so beautifully decorated his office.  That banner had lasted two years, which is pretty darn good.  The original post is here.  I really liked that banner and it hung really well.  At some point I'll go back and make another one just like it but I needed one right away so I tried something new.

I was working on another project for an upcoming retreat for my job (post to follow in the near future) and I had the circle cutter and paper punch out, so I just took some scrapbook paper and tried a circle banner.  I liked the banner, but it has a few issues.  Circles, when attached to one another like this, tend to flip over if not hung against a flat surface - it reminded me of trying to get into a hammock for some reason!  Anyway, as long as I hang it on a wall, it'll be fine.

The first thing I did was to create a Word doc.  I created a circle, put the letter inside and then duplicated it as many times as needed to have all the letters and some heart spacers (you can see one of the hearts at the very left in the picture above).  I made sure that the diameter of the circle was the same as my craft punch.  I made the line very light gray.

I then turned my paper punch upside down and opened the bottom so I could see the letter and position the paper correctly.  Worked great!

I punched the letters out, then used the circle cutter to make circles out of colored cardstock a bit larger than the letters.  Then a final set of circles still larger out of coordinating printed paper.

I used a glue stick to put them all together.  I laid out the patterned paper beforehand so I didn't accidentally put two of the same patterns next to each other.

Holes were next and I wanted them to be the same on each circle.  I had a scrap of paper so I cut a circle, folded it in half and used it as a guide on each letter to determine where the punches would go.

I put reinforcements on the back side of each circle because the weight would tear the paper at some point.

Pieces of ribbon and fiber were used to tie the circles together.

I used about 3 feet of twine at each end.  Voila!  Tippy birthday banner!!