Birthday Banner Tutorial

Last year, my grandma turned 70! Can you believe that?! We wanted to do something special for her to let her know that we love her, so my grandpa asked us to put together a surprise party for her. My aunt got to work getting the location, menu, and the guest list put together, and then my mom and I offered to take care of the decorations and cake. As soon as I was told about the party, I knew I needed to make this Birthday Banner for my grandma. It made me giggle while making it, and the laughs kept coming when everyone saw it hung up at the party. If you are looking to make a statement at your next birthday party, this is the perfect way to go.

The thing that made this possible is that I just happened to have a bunch of pictures of my grandma from the day that my sister blessed her baby. I took about 15 of her all in the same spot with the same light. She made different faces as she was interacting with my nieces, and it was perfect for the banner! The heads were all the same size which makes life easier.

I brought the pictures into picmonkey in the collage section. Then I made it so that there were 4 heads per page, then edited them so that they were black and white. Here’s where it might get a little tricky, but you can do it! I put the image into Microsoft Word, made it so that it was centered and in the middle of the page with narrow margins, and then I printed it. There is no need to send these to be printed on photo paper. Simple black and white printing on card stock works perfectly!

After I had repeated the process until I had 8 different head options, I simply cut out the heads with scissors. I thought it would be cute to add birthday hats to each head, so I used scrapbook paper and cut out enough for every head and then glued the hats on. You can stop here, but I thought it would be cute to add a little pom pom and some scrap ribbon trim to each hat to make them even more fun.

Last, the heads were sewn onto some ribbon so that we wouldn’t have to worry about it falling off, but you are welcome to glue it if you would rather. It turned out so great, and it was the perfect backdrop for the cake table. You definitely need to try this out sometime!