Valentine’s Banner

For Valentine’s Day I wanted to dress up my house a bit this year. I chose these beautiful papers from the kit Café Latte to use by Nicole Seitler and Tracie Stroud. This kit is full of vibrant colors, great for Valentine’s Day and also other occasions!

Mari Koegelenberg has created this DIY Printable Scalloped Banner , which is so cute and easy to use!

Both of them together helped me make an awesome Valentine’s Day Banner that was exactly what I envisioned!

I used two fabulous items from The Digi Chick, pictured and linked below:

Café Latte , by Nicole Seitler and Tracie Stroud (The Digichick)
DIY Printable Scalloped Banner , by Mari Koegelenberg (The Digichick)

I also used:

Photoshop Elements 6
Epson Premium Presentation Paper Matte
Paper Cutter
Fine Detail Scissors
Acrylic Paint and foam brush
Glitter
Label Die shape and Cuttlebug die-cutting machine
Distress ink and sponge
Hole punch
Ribbon
Buttons
Twine
Foam Tape

The first step was opening the template in Photoshop and clipping the papers. I wanted to have six separate pennants, so I did three different pages with two on each. Then I printed them out using my new Epson printer. (I’ve been printer-less for over a month and I am so happy with my new one!)

I then used my paper cutter to roughly cut apart each pennant on the three sheets. While watching a movie I used my fine detail scissors to cut around each scallop. My next step was inking the edges of the pennants—this helps to hide any mis-cuts and give uniformity to the project.

Next I got to work on my letters. I chose to spell out “Love” and to have two matching hearts at each end. My favorite trick to making glittery letters to simply to paint your chipboard letters and right after painting to sprinkle on the glitter. It will dry stuck to your chipboard! No need for any adhesive or spray.

I wanted to be sure that my letters would be visible, so I used a die to cut out four label shapes for my letters to rest on. I created a new document in Photoshop, sized 8 1/2 by 11 inches and added the same cream and red paper from the Cafe Latte kit onto it. After printing it out, I cut two cream labels and two red labels with my die-cut machine. I inked the edges of these labels also and adhered them to the pennants with foam tape for dimension. By using this labels, it really helped to make the letters visible against the red background paper.

At this point I used a hole punch to punch two holes in each side of the pennants where the ribbon will be strung. I started to string on each pennant, leaving about one inch in between each one and about seven inches at each end of the banner. I found it easiest to cut a very long piece of ribbon off of the spool and to work from one end to the other. I then added a button on each end and tied it on with twine.

By stringing together the pennants before adhering the letters, I avoided touching and bumping the chipboard too much and making the glitter fall off. Once the letters and hearts were dry, I shook an excess glitter off of them. I like the shabby look the glitter and paint leaves as it is not perfect and allows the paint to be seen still behind the glitter. Then, I added them onto the labels on the appropriate pennants with more foam tape.

I hung the banner over a window valance, tying a bow at each end and then trimming to size. I think it looks great and my son has asked me to create one for each holiday! It was so quick and fun, that I will definitely be making more. I can already imagine a cute one for Easter!

Valentine’s Banner

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