Birthday Banner Tutorial

Finally I am getting around to posting the tutorial on the Minnie Mouse birthday banner I created for Bean's party.

I made this banner using my Silhouette SD machine. The design was a free one that came with the software.

As you can see from this picture, the banner is made with two different sizes of the design. I cut out the back piece in a darker pink.

 Then I went back to the Silhouette software and scaled the image down a little to make the front piece in a lighter pink.

I added glitter around the edges of the lighter pink pieces. Once the glitter was dry, I attached these pieces to each other using a dimensional glue dot.

Since this was a Minnie Mouse party, I wanted the lettering to be done in the famous Walt Disney handwriting. I found this free download and uploaded it to the Silhouette software.

Honestly, this was the hardest part of the whole project. I originally printed out the letters on a white cardstock because I did not have any "sparkly" paper to use. I then tried to apply hot pink glitter to the letters. That was a complete mess. Next, I took a trip to Michael's and found some white glitter paper. The problem with this paper was that it was too thick for the Silhouette. Now, that could have been more operator error than machine error since I'm still learning all the settings to use. But needless to say, I ran out of paper before I was ever able to figure out how to get the machine to cut all the way through.

Another trip - this time to Hobby Lobby, and I found the right stuff. This is a white iridescent paper that when it moves or you move the color changes from white to pink. This paper really set the whole thing off. Thank you Hobby Lobby!

Once all of the letters were cut out, I attached those with mini glue dots. I found this really cute Minnie Mouse ribbon at Hobby Lobby. I wound up having to attach the banner pieces to the ribbon with staples. I don't like this idea really but the glue dots I tried to use made the pieces angle forward too much. So for future banners I'll have to work on the method of attaching everything together. Hopefully, I will also remember to try and use a ruler to get better spacing, too. You can see that towards the end of "birthday" the spacing is a little wonky. Bean didn't seem to mind.

I absolutely love the banner and had a bunch of compliments on it.  My nieces now want me to make some name banners for them for their rooms.  I'll get right on that, girls!