Simple DIY Valentine’s Day Banner

My daughter is still feeling under the weather.  She made it to gymnastics last night and seemed to be doing fine but woke up this morning with another stomach ache and didn’t want to eat.  You know your child isn’t feeling well when all she wants for breakfast is water and plain cheerios!  So instead of letting her watch cartoons all morning, I decided we would do a craft project (she loves them) and started working on a simple DIY Valentine’s Day banner.

As an not-so-formal resolution, I’ve decided that I’m going to use up some of my craft supplies before I buy new ones.  Notice I said “some.” I have buckets full of craft supplies in my garage that have been sitting there for the past 4 months.  It’s such a pain to dig through the buckets when I need something so I typically just go out and buy it. I’m sure when I get around to organizing all this stuff, I’ll find 20 bottles of black acrylic paint.  Isn’t that how it always is?

For this simple DIY Valentine’s Day banner, all you need is craft paper, thread, needle and scissors.  If you have a heart craft punch (I found one at Michael’s on sale for six dollars) you can use that and it will make things even easier.  The first thing you need to do is cut out your hearts.  You can make them the same size, different sizes, whatever works best for the look you’re trying to achieve.  If you have a heart punch, this takes a matter of minutes.  If you’re cutting them out, make sure to use the same heart as your template to ensure the same size.

You can use whatever type of thread you want to put the banner together.  I ended up using embroidery thread because it’s what I had available in the sewing basket.

The next part is very simple.  Just thread your needle and begin making your banner.  Once I determined where I wanted the thread to be on my hearts, I used that heart as a template for making the holes in the rest of my hearts.  You can see where I positioned my thread.  You’ll want to make sure your thread is in the upper part of the heart so there is enough weight below the thread and the hearts hang correctly.

The banner took about us about 20 minutes to make one strand.  Not only did my daughter and I get to craft together, I was also able to sneak in some learning opportunities.  She learned about patterns and in the process I was able to make an inexpensive, easy banner for our mantle.  I guess her being sick isn’t all bad.

I linked up at Skip To My Lou.