How to Make a Paper Bunting Birthday Banner

Every birthday boy or girl deserves a lovely banner celebrating their special day. With $10 and an hour or so you can make something special that can be used for years to come! Here’s how…

Supplies

• 5 sheets of 12×12 scrapbook paper (see notes)
• 5+ yards of 7/8″ grosgrain ribbon
• 2 sheets of 8.5″ x 11″ paper in a contrasting color

Tools

• 12″ ruler
• pencil
• paper cutting tool: rotary cutter, x-acto knife, etc and cutting mat
  or
• scissors
• 3/8″ craft punch

SUPPLIES NOTES

The best type of paper to use is the heavy 2 sided scrapbook papers, which are more resistant to tearing. Plus you can use the reverse side for more color/pattern options.

If you are looking for an easy way to find matching papers for your banner – look for coordinating sets in the scrapbook department. You can find this in open stock papers as well as tablets.

For my banner I used paper in a set called Bohemian. It was $0.99/sheet but all open stock paper was 30% off at Michaels so I paid just $0.69. I paid $2.50 for 7 yards of ribbon. Everything else I already had so I spent just $6 on the supplies.

INSTRUCTIONS

The first thing we need to do is trim all of our 12″x12″ paper down to size. Using your ruler cut a 4″ strip off all 5 sheets. This leaves us with a 12″x8″ strip that will yield 3 flags.

Grab your ruler and pencil. We need to make some marks along both 12″ edges. On one edge make a mark at 6″. On the other edge mark 3″ from each side.

Now that we have our marks we can start cutting. If you are using scissors then just use a pencil to trace the lines then cut out with your scissors. Otherwise place your paper on the cutting mat and use a ruler as a guide for your cutter. Make sure to press down firmly as you cut. You want to make sure you slice through the paper completely on the first pass.

Use the marks we just made and the diagram below as a guide for your cutting. You should get 3 large triangles and 2 small triangles from each sheet. The small ones can be discarded or saved for another project.

Repeat these steps with all 5 sheets. You should now have 15 triangles.

Take your craft punch and punch holes on the top corners of the triangles. I used a 3/8″ punch but if you have something different you can try that. Just do a test punch and see if your ribbon will fit through it.

Try to make sure you have about 1/4″ margin around the hole so that the paper doesn’t rip when you are threading the ribbon through.

You need 14 flags to spell HAPPY BIRTHDAY!. Lay them out and determine what order you want them in.

Now we need some letters. You want each letter to fit within 2.5″ wide and 3″ high. The H will likely be your widest letter. I printed some at different sizes until I decided which size I liked best.

I have a vinyl cutter so I ended up cutting these out of white adhesive vinyl. You could also do this with a Silhouette or Cricut cutter. For the low tech version I have a PDF that you can print onto your paper and cut out.

Click the image below to download the PDF

Once you have your letters use double sided adhesive to adhere them to each flag. I placed mine so that the bottom of the letter was about 4″ from the top of the flag and centered horizontally. This doesn’t need to be perfect.

Once you are done with the letters string the flags on your ribbon. This makes a pretty large banner. If you don’t have enough room you can make a double banner by stringing Happy and Birthday! on different pieces of ribbon.

You may want to adjust your banners after you hang it – so I’d recommend leaving some extra ribbon.

To store your banner carefully accordion fold the flags and place in a box.