Birthday Series: Custom Birthday Banner Under $5

This post it the first in a birthday party planning series coming up. My daughter will be 1 in less then 2 weeks so I am knee deep in party planning mode. I've been planning for weeks now and I'm going to share how I get ready for a party in a series of posts on here.

This first one is a tutorial on how to make your own birthday banner. It is very easy and cheap. Let's get started!

You will need:

• Patterned paper: I purchased this pack of 12x12 paper at Wal-Mart for $5. There are 50 sheets in this pack with makes it $.10 a sheet which is great. Our party is a Luau theme so I went with this flower paper.
• String: I purchased a string called natural Jute at Hobby Lobby. For 225 feet it was regular price $2.99 but it was only sale for $1.79 (40% off).
• Basic Supplies: scissors, a pencil, tape, glue stick, and a long ruler or something long and straight. You will see I use a long piece of cardboard.

Ok for the first step you want to cut triangles out of the paper in as many as you need. I was making a banner that says "Happy Birthday" so I needed 13 triangles. I wanted to be able to use as much of the 12x12 paper as possible to make the triangles so they would be big and there would not be a lot of waste. The easiest way to cut out same size triangles without having to do a lot of measuring is to first make a small pencil mark in the middle of the paper. Since this is 12x12 paper I used a ruler to make a mark at the 6" mark like this:

Then you simply want to make a straight line connecting your dot to each opposite corner of the paper. You will want to use something long and straight for this. A ruler wasn't long enough for me so I just used a piece of cardboard I had on hand:

Once you've drawn a line from the middle of the paper to each opposite corner you will have a triangle drawn out that looks like this:

So now all you have to do is make two cuts along your lines to cut out your triangle

Continue this process until you have as many triangles cut out as you need.

Next you will want to make your letters. If you are good at free hand, you can draw your letters on paper and cut them out. I am not good at this so I used the computer. I typed "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" in Microsoft Word and made the font really big. 550pt. You will want to use a bubble font, where the inside is white, so you don't use so much ink and if you want your letters to be white. I chose white because my paper was very colorful. You could also make different color letters by using colored paper. I chose white card stock. 

After you print out your letters, cut them all out. Make sure to cut the insides too.

Once you have all your letters cut, attach them to your triangles. I used a glue stick to do this.

After you have all your letters attached you want to attach the triangles to string or ribbon. I just used tape to attach the string to the back of the letters. 

If you are using 12x12 paper, this banner turns out to be very big. I did Happy on one string and Birthday on the other string to hang below it.

Here's some pictures of the finished product! I can't wait to hang it at her party.