A simple little banner

With a new baby in tow, it's been hard to juggle getting any projects done let alone all the day to day upkeep of a home!  So as we neared our new son's baptism day I felt a little sad that I had not made anything to decorate our home with for this special day.  Enter last minute crafting.  I decided I needed to do something large since I'd only have time to sneak in one project so I choose to do a banner to hang from our fire place.  I wanted to spell out "God Bless" thinking I could also use it for Easter by choosing some soft tones.

To keep it simple I opened up Photoshop and made a big circle and cut it in half.  My banner will be made out of half circles.  Then I choose some light blue and tan papers to clip to them, selected my font, and went about typing the letters and positioning them.  Once printed and cut, I decided to embellish them a bit by using cut pieces of text paper.  I took an old book (bye, bye International Tax Law!) and cut out one inch wide sections of text paper.  You can really use any size you like but I wouldn't do smaller than one inch wide as it would be hard to work with. I folded the paper accordion style with no real perfection to it and crumbled them in my hand a bit.  Then I glued them around the back edge of each banner and scrunched them as I went to make a ruffle look.

 Next, I wanted to spruce them up a bit so I used some Tattered Angles Glimmer Mist (Trunk Bay) to add some colored shine to the text.  Again, no perfection just a mist on the edges here and there.  Then I used some Tattered Angels Glimmer Glam (Chandelier) to add even more sparkle and to stiffen the text book paper so it would hold up better.

 And here is a shot of the banner hanging by the fireplace.  I punched two holes in each half circle and threaded some simple ribbon through to hang it.  It really added a nice touch to the day and was a great place to take pictures in front of.