Banner and Garland for a Sweet Girl’s First Birthday Party with Tutorials

My niece Liz, who swears she is flair-impaired, asked me to make some decorations for Audrey’s first birthday party.  I jumped at the chance to make a garland…You can see the tutorial below…I used purples because Audrey’s cake was purple.  The pink flowers I attached to the front of the garland. Looking pretty cute, huh?Not nearly as cute as this, the birthday girl who was awakened a tad early for the party!  She had to do a bit of blanket snuggling on the floor before we got started. Her big sister immediately asked me if she could play games on my iPhone so she was in a great mood!!  Plus she had a great audience of aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas….

I made Elena’s dress (you can see the project here) from a woman’s small ruffled tank top and a t shirt top.  She loves it!

Miss Audrey sure make a dent in her own personal cake!  She pretty much decimated it in very sort order!  That is the bottom of the cake liner you see in the middle of the cake.  She ate that much!  And that was after a ginormous amount of food at dinner.

I made a banner to go across the cake with the scraps left over from the garland…it was soooo cute!!

Laney was a bit put out by all the presents for her sister and the lack of complete attention on her!  She melted down a few times, running down the hallway and throwing herself on her bed!  She is three after all, you wouldn’t expect much different!Audrey had a great time helping her mommy open the presents…she sat on the walker box pretty continuously after it was opened.   She then decided to poop unceremoniously in the middle of the party crowd!   Silly baby!

Now for the tutorial! 

You will need:   Heavy thread, string or yarn (I used bakers twine)

Cardstock

I used a large circle cutter, you could just cut them out freehand, but I went the lazy route!

I also used my Xyron to put the adhesive on the back of the circles.

Cut as many circles as you want to make your garland long and run them through the Xyron machine.  I folded some circles in half first, then opened before I ran them through the Xyron.  Some I didn’t fold first and I folded them after.  I must say it was easier to get them folded evenly if they were folded first before they had the adhesive applied.

Then lay the twine in the middle along the fold…and then just fold the circle in half with the string inside.

I added some flowers I found at Michaels in the $1 bin.  I think it was a package of 12 and I just ran them through the Xyron also (double lazy!) so that they stuck well to the half circles.

I had these strips of paper left over…I have always wanted to make a cake banner.  I cut the strips 1 x 1.5 inches, then I trimmed them to a triangle shape, just free handed them!

Then I took them upstairs to my sewing room (AKA the disaster zone—but more about that later!) and sewed them together with a variegated pink heavy thread.

Now I had myself a great flag banner.   I attached each end to a bamboo skewer and cut off the ends of the skewers so they were close to the cake but not right on top of it.  And I added a shorter skewer in the middle to keep the middle of the banner off the cake!

So that’s all there is to it!  They looked great and added a sweet touch to the party!

 I am linking to these great parties!