Holiday Banner

I followed Jenn Balcer's directions on SCS for making my own holiday banner the other day. I am pleasantly surprised how it turned out, but I do have one little bit of advice to you BEFORE you get started.

What is my little nugget of advice? It might be obvious to you, but it wasn't to me! In choosing the paper you're going to use for your banner, make sure it's a non-directional paper! An overall, generic pattern in other words. I chose the lovely Figgy Pudding paper with the Christmas trees. I excitedly began tracing the template and cutting it out, only to be disappointed when I laid out the triangle pieces in front of me....some of the banner pieces had upside down Christmas trees! Grrrrr. My saving grace was the patterned paper on the other side of the paper! I decided to use the back of the paper for every other piece. Does that make sense? You can see what I'm talking about in the finised product here. See how every other triangle are the Christmas trees? At either end of the word PEACE I had one additional triangle (using some more coordinating paper) in which I placed a handcut Christmas tree using the patterned Figgy Pudding paper.

My letters are a little small I think, or, I placed them too high on the triangle. I can't decide which I think it is. Acutally, I think if I had glittered up the letters with red instead of gold, it'd look a whole lot better. All I did to "bling" them up was press the chipboard letter into my glue pad and then sprinkle glitter all over it. The glue pad is PERFECT for this! So much better then gooping Mono glue all over everything!

To complete the banner, I sewed each triangle onto a long satin ribbon, then added a ribbon bow between each triangle. Can't forget the little Christmas bell sewed at the bottom of each one too! Love the little bell.

I think I'm going to find another place to put my new banner. It's seems a little too small for the fireplace....I have lots of other options to put it, so I'm not too worried at this point! I'm just so tickled I got one made before the holiday decorating gets underway. Have any of you had a chance to make one of these? I highly recommend it, they're so fun!

Thanksgiving yesterday was fabulous. We had a wonderful time with my family. This year it seemed so much more meaningful to all of us. Even the kids. We went around the table, each person sharing with the others what we were thankful for this year. Let me tell you, there were lots of tears, and not just from the adults!!!! The KIDS were so contemplative as well, sharing very special reasons why they were thankful too. The food was AMAZING--we had the works: turkey, stuffing, mashed taters and gravy, cranberries, squash rolls, sweet potatoes, cremed corn, apple pie, and pumpkin pie, just to name a few things. Here are a few special shots I got throughout the day.....

This is me and the hubster....

This is me in the middle, my mom on my right, and the rest of the women are my SIL's...



This is my brother's cat. I'm terribly allergic to cats, so I don't even know this little guy's name. I can tell you he loved the camera and behaved so well during his photo shoot!

And this fun picture is of my family....my mom and dad and my three older brothers. It's got an effect on it called "posterize" from Photoshop. I'm so thankful for my very funny family--they're all a bunch of goofballs. And if you think adults don't misbehave while taking family shots, you don't know my family. This is the one shot that turned out....in all the rest my dad is being a goofball, which is quite unusual....it's usually the three muchacho's in the back that are the ones you have to bribe to behave.....

Have a great day everyone. I'm planning on holing up in my studio ALL day to get some cards made. I might even break out the holiday decorations if I get some extra energy!

Hugs,
Amy