Festive Card Bunting Tutorial

Maybe I should just get this out of the way, fess up and admit I absolutely LOVE Christmas!  That's not to say I think it should be everyday of the year, that would rob it of it's specialness and also I doubt even I could be bothered with that.  But what better way to deal with the shortening days and the coldness that steals your breath than with a great big party around the darkest time of the year just at the point when you are gagging for happy times!

That said, I prefer to keep my festive season in December.  However...some months ago, I promised the ladies at Paperarts that I would make them a "thing" to stick on their wall and as summer has passed (that was summer?) and we're drifting into a different season I thought I would make them something appropriate. I was also feeling guilty about not having kept my word until now!  So last night, instead of keeping up to date with my German studies (Ich habe Deutsch gelernt fur zwei Jahre), I played with some punches, card and liquid dots...

Cut some banner shaped triangles 5 inches long and 3 inches wide at the widest part and decorate with a christmassy style stamp and emboss. Punch whatever leafy shape you may have.  I cut mine in half and glued to the back of my triangle.  Using a green ink dye (I used Ranger Earthtones, Lettuce) smudge some dark patches over the leaves only to make it more visually interesting.  

I used another punch to make the row of holes in the red card for threading later but you could take a length of card and pop holes with a hole punch or pokey tool. Print off a favourite carol or some festive words onto plain white paper and colour lightly with your green ink.  Cut out and attach to the embossed triangles.  

Blob ruby red liquid pearls at the base of the leaves to look like berries. While that's drying, make yourself some flowers using the Scrunchy Flower Tutorial and cut or punch some holly leaves to stick underneath.  (This project is horticulturally all wrong!)  Use a pokey tool to make a little hole where you want the flower to sit and glue the leaves around the hole before you attach the flower.  Push the wings of the paper fastener through the hole and open the wings at the back of the triangle banner to secure the flower in place.  

Tip - if you're going to use glitter spray or anything on your flowers, do it before you attach the flower.  Don't attach it and think, "Oh I know, I'll just give that a little spray with some glimmer mist", because you and I both know that will cause the ink on the strips of words to smudge and you'll have to re-print, re-colour and re-stick.  I make all the mistakes so you don't have to!

Glue on the strip of card with the holes and thread through beads and cord to make a banner.  All together I made 11 banners but it's too long to photograph and show you so here's a section.  I didn't put flowers on each banner, I only made about 7 of them.  Ta dahhh....

You can adapt this to fit whatever colours, card, punches you have.  Before settling on these colours I also experimented with green and silver ('cos I had silver liquid pearls) and that looked really good too, I may make that for myself.