Tutorial: Pennant, Page and Word Banners

With T’s birthday party prep we’ve been making a lot of banners. They are one of the cheapest ways to make a party or theme pop. I’ve been meaning to write up a tutorial for the word banners that I had made for Christmas, ummm yeah months ago. So, to make up for the delay I’m going to give you a three-for-one. I’ll show you how to make three different styles of banners: pennant, page and word.

The pennant or flag style banner is like the one I made for Harry Potter’s Birthday party pictured above and for T’s upcoming butterfly party pictured below. The page kind is probably the easiest and quickest but it still can look adorable. We used this for L’s last birthday party and I think it was darling (yeah I know I still need to write a post for that, it was SO cute). Finally the word style is the most time consuming but it’s still pretty cute. I made some of these for Christmas and will hopefully finish a generic birthday one that I can reuse for different people before T’s party this Sunday.

What you need

Pennant Style Banner

Paper
Paper Cutter or scissors and a sturdy hand
Hole punch (I prefer the smaller sized ones as opposed to the school style ones)
Ribbon or String
Tape (optional)

Page Style Banner

Paper with letters printed on them (you can find fun fonts at 1001freefonts.com)
Paper Cutter if you want to do half page sizes (that’s what I did in the banner above)
Hole punch (I prefer the smaller sized ones as opposed to the school style ones)
Ribbon or String
Tape (optional)

Word Style Banner

Paper (or precut letters)
Cutting machine (like a cricut or silhouette) OR a font you like and patience to trace it and cut it out by hand
Hole punch (I prefer the smaller sized ones as opposed to the school style ones)
Ribbon or String
Tape (optional)

What to do

Prepare your shapes. For the pennants cut your paper into triangles, print your letters for the page style and for word style banners cut out your letters. If you don’t have a cutting machine and don’t mind taking the time you can either print out a font you like and trace the letters or if your cheap and don’t want to waste paper and ink I’ve held the paper straight to the computer screen to trace letters before. This is the most time consuming part.
Punch two holes on the top of each shape. Make sure they are far enough from the edge so they won’t rip easily when you work with them
Next you want to lay out your pattern. Lay your pages, pennants or letters out how you want them to hang.
Thread the ribbon through the holes. Decide ahead of time whether you want a stripe of ribbon to go in front or behind your shape. Take your time you don’t want to rip it after all that work.
If you want tape the ribbon to the back of your shapes this will minimize the twisting and make it easier to untangle the banner (yes it’ll get tangled when you try to hang it just expect it so it doesn’t annoy you too much).
Hang your banner and enjoy.

And if you’ve made a pennant one you probably have little scraps left from your flags. tape them onto skewers throw them in a glass or short vase and you’ve got yourself some super cute little flags. See em in action here.

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