Wave the Banner High!

...my sister, JILL, has agreed to do a Christmas-craft guest post!

I'm so excited!  Jill was sharing photos of some of her Christmas decorating yesterday on Facebook, and I just LOVED this "Noel" banner that she made -- so I asked her to stop by and share how she made it.

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Hello DFMS readers!  It's me... the <infamous and younger> sister, Jill!  I love my sister dearly and am so honored that she asked me to write a guest post.

Welcome to my home!  It's getting all decked out for Christmas.  Truth be told, I'm usually still tweaking up until Christmas Eve, when we have a whole houseful of guests.

For the most part, I'm a pretty traditional girl when it comes to holiday decorating.  And, there are some things that never change -- like our 10 foot tree which is covered every year with all of the ornaments we have accumulated over the years.  Gifts from friends and loved ones, school pictures on paper plate wreaths, little hand-stitched chickens made by our grandmother, fragile bulbs that belonged to our great-grandfather... they're all there.

But this year, my new challenge was this shelf in my kitchen.  For years, it held a couple sponge-wear bowls and and old wooden sign.  It was starting to feel kind of old and tired.  One day this summer, I found these colorful plates and little bowls at Target, and I was in love.  A couple days ago, I started dreaming of what I could do to make this shelf look a little bit more festive.  As I was looking at it during dinner one night, decorating ideas dancing in my head ( my husband LOVES it when I do that), it finally hit me.

My childhood Christmas stocking was this turquoise one with a cute snowman on it.  When I was growing up, I always thought it was a little odd, that MY stocking was bright turquoise and everyone else in our family had a traditional Christmas-red stocking.  Even as a child of the 60's I thought it was strange, but I love it now.  So, I dug it out of the boxes in the basement, and hung it from the shelf.

But... I still felt like something was missing.  I decided what I really needed hanging next to that stocking was a cute banner.  You know -- like all those banners that are all-the-rage on sites like Pinterest.  I knew this meant I would need to get my craft on.  [I used to be crafty -- back before I had children, I was a craft QUEEN!  These days... notsomuch.]  I went to one of my favorite stores, Hobby Lobby.  I wandered around and stood in the aisles gazing at things until I found a whole bunch of supplies that I thought might work.  (It turns out that Hobby Lobby has quite a selection of banner-making products these days.  How convenient!)

This is what I ended up using: scrapbook paper, chipboard pennant triangles, and chipboard letters.  I also used some things I already had (Yeah!)... mini clothespins from a previously thought-out but un-made project, and red and white baker's twine (thank you Target Dollar Spot!).  I also needed a ruler, pencil, and an Elmer's glue stick.

I started by using the chipboard triangles as a pattern.  I laid them on the blue-ish paper and then, using the ruler and "eyeballing it," I made a slightly larger triangle.  Then I cut a slightly smaller triangle using the red-patterned paper.  After cutting my larger/smaller triangles, I trimmed the tops until they were the exact size I wanted.  That's the great thing about using triangles.  They are easy to cut down in size.  (I'm sure there is some goemetric principle there...?)

Next, I started gluing the three pieces together.  The chipboard triangles were sandwiched between the larger and smaller paper triangles (peeking out a little) to provide a little stability.  After my triangles were all glued together, I glued on the chipboard letters spelling out "NOEL."

Lastly, I cut a piece of the baker's twine to length and tied slip knots at the ends, using the clothespins to clip the banner pieces to the twine.

Voila!  This is what I ended up with.  Cute, huh?

I finished off my shelf by putting these gigantuous pine cones in the bowls to look like trees.  My husband bought these for me a few weeks ago when he was in a home improvement store while on a business trip.  True story.  He said he got them for me because he knew I would love them... and he was right!

This banner project wound up being super easy.  It took about an hour with a couple of interruptions.

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Thanks for sharing, Jill!