DIY Party Banner

Hi friends! I'm "DIY-er", Debi Adams, and today I am sharing something I created for our own Mary Beth Shaw in honor of her July birthday.  Though I planned out Mary Beth's party decor long before her special day, I didn't get to make the banner until I got to a creative play weekend at Ephemera Paducah (her birthday was then) and guess who sat down next to me? Lol.  Birthday girl herself!  ( I mean any other time who wouldn't want to sit by the Queen of Stencils, right? I adore her.) Anyway, I just pretended like I was working on some random project and I don't think she ever noticed.  It didn't take very long to design and create and soon I had them packed away until the party.   The nice part about making banners is that you can use them over and over again.  In fact in August, my daughter Kristen had her birthday and I recycled the banner, but decorated her table decor a bit differently. I like for every person to have their own unique party decor.  Here's a peek into Kristen's birthday. This one was the mini banner, part of Mary Beth's party...

And here was the bigger one..

I used the lemon napkins as my inspiration but added a touch of blue on my background to make it a tad bolder.  To create the banner I applied gesso to mixed media paper then I added blue and green paint from PaperArtsy using the smudgy. If you do not have this handy sponge tool, you are missing out!  Check it out here at StencilGirl!

I then applied various stencils to the substrate.  (The list is at the bottom.)  I used an entire sheet of paper rather than cut the banner shapes. The painting went faster that way.  Any excess scraps went in my bin for recycling for another project or to be used for a card.

Who stops at just one stencil? Not I. So I added more...

I added the flower print on top of this and then cut it into 4 1/2" x 6" rectangles for the large banner.  The small banner was 2 1/2" x 4" for each piece.  

The addition of die-cut letters, daisies and lemons were next. If you don't have access to these,  you can use the same daisy stencil in the project to create your own shape by tracing around the image and cutting it out. Some of our stencil alphabets can work too!  Check them out here.  Letters can be purchased at a hobby store or see if your local school district or scrapbooking store has a die-cutting  machine and alphabet that you can use. And if none of these work, why not paint your own letters?  

I made snips at the bottom of the  smaller banner to make it different and then die cut smaller letters. 

 For Mary Beth's banner, I actually used big letters to spell out ART and small letters for the "P" and Y" so that made it pARTy! Get it? :) 

I love how stencils make great backgrounds.  You can decorate the letters and make the background plain to change it up.  Or, you can add more layers to the background to make it for someone else or a different occasion. 

 Though banners look great hanging, metal frogs are awesome for standing them up.

Any which way, they are very festive, completely recyclable and so much fun to create. 

Hope to see what you make!  

XO,

Debi

Stencils Used:

ATC Mixup 1-Mary Beth Shaw

ATC Mixup-Jennifer Evans

StencilClub-Kristie Taylor SC02-2018

Chain Mail Large by Mary Beth Shaw

Here's just a few pics from Kristen's birthday.