Starting from Scratch – Challenge update No. 1 | Live, Love, Laugh, Be

Starting from Scratch – Challenge update No. 1

: Christmas Banner - Challenge Project No. 1

So, remember that Starting Over challenge I decided to participate in? This week, while I was feeling a tad under the weather, I decided to get started on this!

First I had to come up with a project. Since I was feeling so bad, I needed it to be something simple, that I could do from bed, and put down as I needed to. So…

I dug through my stash of stuff and found a pad of cardstock I’d purchased a few years ago (I have a paper addiction that acts up sometimes) and found this brightly colored stock.

At first, I thought of making cards, but alas, my drawing skills are not so great, then, I thought about banners. I love looking at all the paper banners on Etsy and how festive they are and I thought well, I’ll make a Christmas banner since the Christmas in July sale is coming up!

So, I found an outline of a Christmas ornament, traced it onto one of my cutting mats (These are little 2 for $1.00 throw-away cutting boards that I get at dollar tree! They are perfect for making templates because they’re made of thin plastic that doesn’t tear but can be cut with good scissors and you can trace around them to get a clean edge).

Once I had several pieces cut in different colors of stock, I drug out my gel pens and started stenciling on the letters to spell “HAPPY HOLIDAYS”. Then, I used tacky glue and iridescent glitter to embellish them, used my hole punch to put holes in each side, strung them together with some white satin ribbon and.. voila!

My very first holiday banner. I’m thinking about using a similar technique to make fabric ones for the shop