*THANK YOU* Rosette Banner

I'd like to begin sharing some of the paperie projects I worked on for my friends' wedding last April. It was truly a labour of love!!! It all started shortly after they got engaged a year ago. My friend called me up and asked if I would make their wedding invitations! I said "heck, yeah!". I was honoured that they asked me! Truth be told, I woulda been a bit hurt if they hadn't. ;-)

Since I *loooooove* paper and crafts and DIY, my involvement didn't just stop at The Invitations. Oh no. We had so much fun browsing wedding blogs, sharing ideas, brainstorming, & scouring thrift shops! I'll start by sharing instructions on how to make a Scrabble tile Thank You banner. Don't worry; I'll share the process of The Invitations (my 'babies'!) too, but not now.

In several wedding blogs, I had seen couples holding a thank you banner and thought that was so clever! I was inspired by this Memory Box blog post by to create a Thank You banner for my friends. They both love Scrabble, so I thought this would be perfect, except the Scrabble tiles would have to be bigger! Waaaay bigger. ;-)

Materials:

• white cardstock paper
• photos of Scrabble tile letters; take your own photos or find some on Flickr
• dictionary pages, music sheets; scanned & printed or check out The Graphics Fairy
  
• 12X12 scrapbooking papers (I used mostly Basic Grey's Ambrosia collection)
  
• 6" paper doilies
• glue gun
• strong glue for paper (Zip Dry Paper Glue or Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue) or strong double-sided tape
• nice ribbon
• single hole punch
• a bunch of objects to weigh the paper rosettes down (such as mugs, staplers, etc)

I took photos of the Scrabble tiles, cropped & resized them to be 4.5" tall. I printed them on cardstock paper.

I sponged some orange ink onto the white paper doilies.

To make the pennant banner, I used 12 X 12 scrapbooking paper in the colours of the the wedding theme; orange and grey. I marked the middle on the bottom of the paper, then trimmed it from a top corner to the mark and vice versa on the other side. The top is 12" wide. Use a single hole punch to punch a hole in each top corner.

For the paper rosettes, I printed some dictionary papers and music sheets from The Graphics Fairy onto 8.5" X 11" paper. Trim off the white margins and cut in half. The paper will be about 4" wide. Fold the paper (accordion-fold style) every 1/2". I glued 3 pieces together end to end with glue (strong double-sided tape also works) for each rosette.

To make the rosette, adhere the two ends of the long pleated strip together, creating a ring. Then, you push it together in the centre and press down. Use an object (such as a stapler) to hold it down for a few minutes. Then, take the hot glue gun, put a dab of glue in the middle, place the doily on top and finally add some glue to the back of the scrabble tile and press it gently down. Use the object to keep it weighed down while you work on the next letter.
Once all the letters are dry and stable, place them in order. Measure and cut some nice ribbon and thread the ribbon in and out of each letter. Since the bride wanted such big letters, I made 2 banners (rather than one long one). I think this would also have worked with smaller letters (2.5" - 3" tall).





Many, many, many thanks to Cheryl & Juliet who helped me finish up the banner and to B for taking the close up pics.

Photo credits of the lovely couple by the talented photographers Natalia & Christine.

Thanks for looking & taking a sneak peek into this wedding, with more to come! I had so much fun making everything and I had a lot of help from friends & family, which made it even more fun!

EDIT: If you'd like a fast and easy Thank You banner, take a look here: Printable Alphabet Bunting on Ruffled®.