It’s about time I posted pictures of the birthday banner I made for Clark! I see all the cute banners that Katie Bower and Sherry Petersik make and I wish I had their ability to transform my visions to reality, but I kind of like the cute quirkyness and homemade look of the banner that came together. Without further ado, here is the banner series.
First, I cut all the pieces I’d need in advance. I used pre-packaged quilting squares cut into fours for the penants (because I could make around thirty pretty quickly) and some remnant fabric for the letters. I tried a couple of times to make a template for the letters, but I ended up freehanding them. I used Sharpie, but next time, I’d use a lighter color and washable markers.
As you can see, I now can’t get the Sharpie out of the letters. But that’s okay, because hanging high in the air, you won’t be able to see it unless you look reeeeeeaaaaallllly hard. (So if you’re coming to the party, don’t look!)
I picked out an array of funky patterns in bold primary and secondary colors (with the addition of the most masculine pink I could find to match the Yo Gabba Gabba theme).
Can’t you just see DJ Lance in this fabric???
The “Brobee” fabric is my favorite, though. Even though it’s a geometric pattern, you can still see the colors of his stripes.
Next came the arduous task of gluing all the letters on the penants and sewing all the exposed edges. If you look above, you can see that my Allene’s Glue had some issues and left stains that look wet all the time 😦 Note to anyone trying to recreate this: DON’T sew over the letters until you are absolutely sure the glue is dry. I spent an hour digging glue out of the little feet and levers on my sewing machine. Needless to say, the letters haven’t been sewn for the time being, and I don’t think it will ever happen, to be honest.
After all that hard work getting everything ready, the assembly goes fairly quickly. I bought three 12 foot rolls of white 1 inch grosgrain ribbon from the Dollar Tree and did a straight stitch across the top of all the penants. It took all of ten minutes to assemble the three banners from here.
I think they’re pretty darn cute, don’t you? These pictures were taken during the same low-light dusk period that I posted about previously, but without the sky to balance the colors, so that’s why they look funny.
One final note: our “big” birthday present to Clark is going to be his toddler bed. We’re not sure that we’ll actually move him to the bed on his birthday, but he’s getting awfully close to climbing out of his crib, so we know it’s going to be soon. And since I just can’t help myself, a clearance bedding pack at Target got me started on redecorating his room to be more “little boyish” instead of “babyish”. The theme?
The Star Trek/Stargate fan in me is giggling right now!
Two Blue Pillars 