As I began putting together the super-fun printables from Love the Day for my twins’ Nancy Drew mystery birthday party on Sunday (eek! not ready! alert! danger Will Robinson!), I thought it might be helpful to put together a series of tutorials on working with printables. So first up: how to assemble a printable party banner.

Banner Assembly Supplies

• Printables
• Paper trimmer or scissors
• Scrapbooking paper
• Scrapbooking letters or Silhouette machine
• Aleene’s Thick Tacky Glue
• 3-D adhesive sticker
• 3/8″ grosgrain ribbon

Banner Assembly Instructions

1 – Print your banner on 110 lb. cardstock. I like to print at Office Depot. It’s fast and easy for me, and I get high quality color. Plus, I don’t eat up my home print cartridge. Printing an entire printables collection usually costs around $25 with a coupon.

2 – Time to cut out your banners. If you feel like you can’t cut straight, then use a paper trimmer. The trick with the paper trimmer is lining up the angle of your pennant correctly. This can actually become pretty time consuming.

So I just use a quality pair of scissors and cut out my pennants by hand. Your scissors should cut smoothly and cleanly. Ideally, you’ll use one pair of scissors just for paper.

3 – These are plain pennants and you could use these as-is to embellish a dessert table, or hang between tree branches, or criss-cross them on a backdrop … the possibilities are endless. But I wanted to add words to mine. So I used the same technique as on my vintage book banner. (These next few photos are from that tutorial.) I punched a scalloped circle for each letter in my word. You could do this on your Silhouette, too.

4 – Use scrapbooking letters or a Silhouette to make your words. Mine are made with the font American Typewriter at 225 points.

5 – Adhere the letters to the scalloped circle with a very thin bead of Aleene’s Thick Tacky Glue.

6 – To keep the circles from warping as the glue dries, let them sit for a bit in or under a thick book.

7 – Punch a hole in the corner of each pennant. I like this rectangular punch from Fiskars.

8 –  Back to your pennants. Decide how you want to arrange the patterns. I alternated patterns with solids.

9 – Break out your 3-D adhesive stickers and use three on the back of each scalloped circle. Then add one circle to each pennant.

Here you can see the dimension that the stickers add.

10 – Now it’s time to lace your banner. I am the queen of measuring how much ribbon I need for my banner and then still cutting the ribbon too short. So I finally figured out how to string a banner before cutting my ribbon. Unroll as much ribbon as you think you’ll need for your banner. Allow about 18” for a tie on either end of your banner. Don’t cut the ribbon off the roll.

11 – Start with the last letter in your word. Thread the ribbon from the front of the right hole to the back.

12 – Bring your ribbon back up through the left hole. Leave about 1” slack of ribbon between each pennant. Continue until your entire banner is threaded.

13 – Trim the ragged end off your ribbon.

14 – Tie a bow after the first letter. If you need more or less ribbon, make your adjustments by sliding the pennants along the ribbon. Tie a bow after the last letter, then cut your ribbon from the spool.