thanksgiving welcome banner tutorial - guest post

Can you believe Thanksgiving is next week (at least in America)? If you're expecting family or friends for the big day, this gorgeous vintage Thanksgiving banner would be perfect to welcome loved ones. We're so excited to have a fabulous tutorial from my friend and banner-maker extraordinaire, Jennifer Barnhart (of Lasting Memories fame), that not only shows you how to make it, but gives some great hints and tips for all banners. She'll show you how to separate digital collage art into separate images in Photoshop Elements, and how to pre-plan and calculate the size of any banner you make. I'm so thankful for this tutorial!

Vintage Collage Art Thanksgiving Banner

I love banners! I love holidays! With Thanksgiving approaching, I decided that I needed a new banner celebrating this season. I had a hard time deciding between “Give Thanks”and “Welcome”. I finally decided that “Welcome” was the feeling I wanted to convey to guests. I wanted a simple project that would be quick and inexpensive to create. I made this banner in under an hour, for less than $5 and it’s exactly what I needed for my front door.

When I make a new banner, the first thing I decide is where I want to put it. Then I design it for that location. This banner is going to hang in a doorway. It is always good to first measure the place where the banner will go. Add 2-4” to drape the banner. Divide that number by the number of letters in your banner to decide the size of each banner piece. In this case, I am using a doorway with 7 letters in the word “Welcome”. I decided that each piece should be 31/2” wide. (Ok, I know this sounds like a lot of math! Don’t worry, it really isn’t that complicated. You could even get your kids to help you figure it out.)

Supplies:

*Thanksgiving Collage Sheet. You can purchase these from Etsy. Here are a couple of sellers that I really like (It can take up to 24 hours to receive your collage sheet by email, so you need to plan ahead on this part):
- Xander Graphics
- MajikDesign
- Piddix
*Two pieces of the same color 12x12 card stock in a color that coordinates with
your home and your collage sheet for the background.
*One piece of 81/2x11 card stock in a darker color for the letters
*About 50” of ribbon you don’t have to be exact here – you may even want to add a few inches, depending on the width of the molding around your door and where you are hanging your banner from
*24” of contrasting ribbon – again, you don’t have to be exact
*Glitter Glue (like Stickles)
*Tombo Mono Multi glue (or any other glue that is good for gluing paper together and will dry flat)
*Scissors
*¼” hole punch
*Paper trimmer

1. Download your collage sheet. Open it in Photoshop Elements. Go to Image>Divide Scanned Photos to break apart your images. Not every collage will have clean white space between the
graphics. To make this easy, you want to purchase one that has white space all around the images.

2. Choose which images you want for your banner. Hint: Go for images with lighter backgrounds; the letters will be harder to see if the images are dark.

3. Resize the images. Go to Image>Resize. Make the width 3”. Hint: Make sure that you have your “constrain proportions” box checked and let the height float.

4. Now it’s time to print your pictures. You don’t need to use special paper, but you
can if you would like to.

5. Cut apart your images and use glitter glue to enhance them. I highlighted collars,
cuffs, hair ribbons, wheat and pumpkins with my glitter glue. Platinum glitter
glue looked great on the wheat and clear glitter glue looked great everywhere else.

6. While the glitter glue is drying, cut your background papers to 3 1/2” wide by 3 3/4” high.

7. I used my Silhouette to cut my letters 21/2” tall. The font I used was Euphorigenic from Dafont.com. You can also use any other die cut system or click here to learn to do it by hand.

8. If your glitter glue is dry, glue the digital image to the background rectangle. Glue the letters on top of the images, making sure that they are not placed over an important part of the design.

9. Punch two holes at the top of each rectangle and thread your ribbon through. Use the contrasting ribbon to tie knots in between each rectangle.

10. Make a loop at each end to hand them with.

11. Hang the banner. Grab anyone who is nearby to ooooh and ahhh over your cute banner.

That’s it!