Fall Pennant Banner {A Tutorial}

If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know I'm a sucker for the "mbers." Ya know, September, October, November and December.

So the minute September hits, I start decorating.

Thus far, I've had a 9-year old ask me why I had my Halloween decorations out already, and I've had an adult male ask me why I had my "Thanksgiving stuff" out. Har...har... it's neither, thank you very much. It's just my stash of fall decorations. The jack-o-lanterns and ghosts don't come out until October first.

Now that my little guy is in preschool, I have a few more hours to myself during the week, which has allowed me to get back to some fun crafting. My first project, is this easy fall pennant banner.

I promise you, if you have a computer, a pair of scissors, some scrapbook paper, and ribbon, you can make this banner.

Here's how ya do it...

Step one:
Decide what you want your banner to say. "Happy Fall Y'all," "Autumn," "Happy Harvest," or just simply "Fall" which is what I chose. If you're going to hang your banner across a doorway or a wide window, you may want a longer word than just "Fall" so that it looks balanced.

Step two:
Print off the letters you are going to use.
I used these free monogram letters from the Martha Stewart web site. They print off 6 letters to a page and each letter has a fun little border around them, which I thought would add some character to the banner. Here is the link to the Martha Stewart free alphabet printables.
I would recommend using cardstock instead of regular computer paper for the letters if you have some.Of course, you could just print off letters using Microsoft Word or any other computer program you have.

Here are the letters I chose.

Now, because I'm totally and completely anal, I wanted the letters to be uniform, I used a compass to draw circles around each letter so that I would know where to cut.

 Which resulted in fairly uniform letters.

Step 3:
Now it's time to move to the pennant pieces. You can either measure them with a ruler, or download this free Pennant banner printable from the blog, Martin Family Living.Then use it to trace the pennant pieces on scrapbook paper.

Clearly I had used this scrapbook previously for another project.

Step 4:
Then, using an X-acto knife, cut small slits into the corner of each pennant piece so you can string a ribbon through them.

Then I used good ol double-sided tape to stick the letters on to the pennant pieces. And then strung a grosgrain ribbon through the slits.

I decided I wanted a little bit more color, so I also added an orange grosgrain ribbon to the ends and then strung it across my entertainment center.

And now that I have a banner that clearly states that these are "Fall" decorations, maybe it will help clear up any further confusion about which holiday I'm celebrating. :)