Fourth of July Banner

Hi everyone! Can you believe it! I actually have 2 posts for you this weekend. Although I don't think my shopping haul counts as there was no actual project :)

My project this week is a paper banner for the upcoming 4th of July holiday. I was asked to make a banner by our clinic staff a few weeks ago.
So far I have made a Halloween, Christmas, and Easter banner for the clinic.

For this banner I picked up a paper pack from Hobby Lobby. The pack is from Canvas Home Basics "Americana cardstock". It blends a nice navy blue and red with kraft card stock which is currently my favorite to use in projects.
I had used a similar pack for my Christmas banner which worked well. Luckily the company had a pack with red and blue for the holiday.

I also decided to use different banner shapes. My banners are usually the same triangle shape but I recently made a Birthday banner with different banner shapes which I really liked how it turned out.

I used my Cricut Expression 2 with the "Birthday Bash" cartridge to cut out the banner shapes and die cuts. This cartridge is great for birthday decor and cards. It has every banner shape you can think of.

I decided to use 3 different banner shapes and used 4 different papers including 2 patterns and 2 solids. All these papers came with the Americana Canvas paper pack.
I cut the banners at 7.5" using my Cricut.

If you have seen my banners before, you will see that I like to add a top layer to the banner. Since this banner is for the 4th of July, I decided to use some star die cut shapes as well as my usual scallop die cut for the top layer.

I cut the scallops and stars at 4" using the Cricut. I decided to use the scallops more to break up the stars and add personality to my banner.

The paper pack also came with vanilla colored solid card stock, which I used for the letter die cuts.
To make them stand out, I used my Tim Holtz distress ink in vintage photo to ink the edges. The picture below is pre-inking.

I cut the letters at 4" as well.

Now to put it together. I used my Tombow runner adhesive to glue the letters to the stars and scallop shapes.

To adhere to the banner, I used 3D adhesives to make the top layer "pop out" and give it some depth.

Here is a few of the first ones I put together:

After I have all the banner shapes and letters together, it is time to string it together. I used curling ribbon in both red and blue to string the banners together.
To add a finishing touch, I like to add different ribbons between each banner. I found a pack of July 4th  holiday ribbon at Hobby Lobby and on sale! LOVE Hobby Lobby and their sales :)

Now for the finished product:

Ready now for display in clinic!

Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a great week!


Ana