Christmas Banner with Emma

Hi everyone!  Emma here to share a quick and easy project using this month's Add-on kit.

I really wanted a "Merry Christmas" banner for our mantle this year and had been on the look out for something for a while.  Imagine my joy when I saw the gold alpha's in the Add-on kit as I knew straight away I was going to use them and make my own banner!  I'm admittedly not awesome at DIY crafty things, but that doesn't mean I don't love to give them a try ;)

That being said, the banner was SUPER easy to put together.  It was just a matter of running the letters through the sewing machine and voila, you are done!  Is that easy or what?! I used plain white cotton so it didn't stand out too much (I'd have used gold but it's being difficult in my machine at the moment and I was in a "get it done now" mood, haha).  

Once I had it all stitched together I put it up on the mantle and thought I needed just a little something to jazz it up.  And given that stars are one of my favourite shapes ever, I made a couple paper stars and hung them at each end.  The stars are also super easy to make and I've put together a little step by step below.

To make these you just need scissors and some glue. 

Instructions (to match photo's from top to bottom, left to right)

1. Pick your favourite papers and cut some squares (for my banner I went with 3 inch and 6 inch)
2. Fold the paper in half on both sides
3. Fold the paper diagonally from both sides
4. Make 4 cuts on each edge of the paper (in the centre line of your fold).  Each cut should be the same length so you can measure it, or if you're like me, you'll just wing it ;)
5. From your cuts, fold each edge up towards the folded line
6. Repeat on all four sides
7. Pull each piece back towards each other and adhere with glue
8. Repeat for all four sides
9. You now have one half of your star!  
10. To get stars like what I have on my banner, you just need to repeat the above steps for your second half.  Then it's just a matter of gluing them together (I used hot glue gun for sticking them together, was just easier and I won't have to worry about them coming apart).

They could not be any easier to make really!  To hang them I just threaded cotton through one corner and tied it onto the white cotton from the letters.  There is not much weight in the whole banner so its just fixed to the wall using gold drawing pins.  Easy to make, easy to install.

I am actually really happy how it turned out!  It's one of those projects that looks cute and takes no time to put together.  Perfect for this time of the year where things tend to get a little crazy!

Well thanks for sticking through to the end,  I hope you enjoyed it reading about it as much as I did putting it together :)

Are you a DIY decoration/s kind of person?  Did you make any this year? If so I would love to hear/see what you've done!

Em xo