"Give Thanks" banner

Because I loved my Halloween fabric banner so much, I decided to make a banner for Thanksgiving as well. I didn't want to do the same thing, though, so I browsed through pintrest and found a free printable. I didn't want to use up all of my color ink, though, so I took the general idea of the printable and created my own banner. I started by picking out some fall looking scrapbook paper out of my pile of stuff. Once I had the paper picked out, I cut a small piece off of each one to lay out how I wanted the letters to print out.


Once I had the paper in the order I liked, I wrote out "GIVE THANKS" on the pieces and then grouped them together by paper type.


I knew I wanted to print out two letters per page, so this way I knew exactly which letters to put together. At this point, I just opened a word document and picked a font I liked. I added a simple border from AutoShapes and tweaked the size until I could get two on a page in a size I liked. The letters actually turned out a LOT bigger than I thought they would be, but the size worked for the space I have. The most annoying part of this project was cutting everything out. I used my paper cutter to cut on all the straight lines and scissors for the curves.

Once the letters were all cut out, I laid them out on the floor on a piece of ribbon. I stuck them on using double sided tape so they would be easy to move around and arrange if it wasn't what I wanted.


Well, it turned out that I got it basically how I wanted on the first try. Because I am lazy, I didn't go back and glue gun the letters on or glue gun the ribbon onto itself to make a loop. This was a mistake. The banner has fallen several times. I need to go back with the glue gun and permanently attach everything so that it can be reused without fear of falling apart!


Like I said, the letters are bigger than I thought they would be, but are the perfect size for being on the bookshelf! I think it's really cute and I love how it turned out. If they had matte laminating, I would probably laminate it to make it more durable and lasting. This project cost me a grand total of zero dollars, as I had all the materials on hand already. That's my favorite kind of crafty project: FREE!