DIY Reusable Banner

One of my favorite things is creating something that you can use over again. When I was trying to think of ideas for my daughter's first birthday, I came across an idea to make a banner.  When I started making the banner I realized that I could reuse the banner easily for every birthday party and so I also made one for my son. 

 

 

 

This is the sign I used last year for my son's 1st birthday party.  To see  more detail into the planning of his party go HERE. .  After I make it, I just change out the photo to a recent one and carefully remove the number for age and replace it with the new.  In a perfect world, I would have removed the age right after the party as it is a lot easier to take off then waiting a full year, but worse case you have to replace the background paper on that block.

 

I printed out all of the letters on my home computer.  I went into Microsoft Word and chose the font I wanted followed by the largest size that would fit on 1 piece of paper and hit print.  You could do any font and any color, I just liked black because it was bold and easy to see on any patterned background paper and easy to cut around.

 

 

 

I cut solid paper for the back and used thicker cardstock for durability.  All of the letter and numbers were size 9.5" long by 8.5" wide.  The top was scrapbook paper, which was thinner and cut out at size 9" long by 8" wide.  The picture in between the name and age was cut out at 9.5" long by 5" wide and the scrapbook patterned paper was 9" long by 4.5" wide. 

 

Then I glued the scrapbook paper to the cardstock solid paper and then glued the letters/number and picture (I used a 4x6 photo) on top of the scrapbook paper. 

 

 

 

Next, I hole punched each top corner for the ribbon to go through.

 

 

 

I took the ribbon and fed it from the top right hand corner through the back and back up through the left top corner and continued through each one. 

 

 

 

You can choose to have as much ribbon in between each block as you want and leave extra on the ends for where you want it displayed.  The banners fold up easily and are easy to store for whenever you want to use them again, which is in my case every birthday. 

 

 

 

What are some things that you reuse each year for special occasions?