Name Banners

As my young lady nears teenager hood, I find it increasingly difficult to balance between cutesy girl things and more teen-hip grown girl things.  One of the neat birthday gifts we've discovered is the Name Banner.  Okay, I could come up with a slightly more hip, hot and happening name- but I'd need a lot of help and frankly I'd rather just show you the goods.

We make the Name Banner to combine the young lady's favorite colors/themes.  Mackenzie really likes orange, can you tell?  The letters of the name are typically cut from a 12 x 12 textured cardstock.  In the interest of making the most out of the paper, I will typically cut the letters out at 5 3/4 in.  This way you can typically cut 4 letters out of one piece of paper.  For those girls with shorter names, I might increase the size to 6 1/2 in.

Next, we use the Cricut to cut out some interesting embellishments.  Because I am in love with the paper flower, I typically use layered flower cuts of the same or different sizes.  However, this is a great opportunity to let your young teenager-in-training use the Cricut.  A quick sort through the carts and Katie came up with flowers, stars, and even a sunburst.  I will often use a contrasting color to make the embellishments pop right

 off the page.  Here we used a slightly darker orange and bright yellow.  Another trick to add dimension to the look is to use ink on the edges.  Here, the orange letters looked more appealing with a little brown ink on the edges.  This helps the edges to soften and blend in with the other decorations in the room.  I usually apply the ink haphazardly- a very specific act for the type-A, perfectionist that is me.  I consider "inking" to be one of my psychiatric therapies.  Keeps me from going all- "this doesn't look [right]/[good]/[special enough]".  You can finish the look off with a hole punch and some pretty printed ribbon.  The ribbon for Mackenzie's banner is a shiny,satin ribbon with yellow and orange flowers printed on a white background.  Usually a three foot roll of whatever is on sale works wonders.   I'll be back later this month with a quick post of another Name Banner example just to see how different and unique each banner can look.  Til then, craft a banner and save a toy from the short, meaningless life spent with a teenager-in-training.

Andie