Our DIY Sock Monkey Party - The Birthday Banner

Next on the list is the birthday banner.

I couldn't decide in which order to go, or which creation to blog about next, so I just went to the pictures and picked the first thing. So, next up!

First of all, the pictures I'm going to show... I am well aware that these parties are FAR cuter than anything I could pull off. There are some seriously CUTE party ideas out there!! I didn't realize how awesome you could make a party be and all without breaking the bank!! I'd already decided on sock monkeys, so I stuck with it. They're so stinkin' cute, anyhow. I wanted a banner to go above Jake's seat. I wanted to look similar to this.

I saw this banner while I was searching for examples to post just a moment ago. I wished I'd seen this before I made my own. This is SO CUTE!!! I found it at Bayou Moon, where she makes some crazy awesome stuff! Seriously! Go look!!

And this is what I made from the first image above.

I had already cut a ton of stuff with the circle cutter and was so over that dang thing. It is VERY time consuming, those circle cutters! So, I already knew I was going to be going with squares for the letters. I had left over card stock from making everything else, so I used that for the background weird polygon/pentagon thing. Since that would be pretty plain by itself, I needed a fun ribbon to hang it up with. It would have looked pretty plain with just the letter on a solid card stock and plain ribbon. Ish. So, I used polka dot ribbon. Brown polka dot with the red ones, and red polka dot with the blue. I had some left over cut out monkey circles so I put those on each end of each word. I didn't have enough ribbon to dangle down, which I really wanted... so I just had to tack it up instead. Oh, well. I made it at around 1am the day OF the party. Procrastination at its best. I like to think Tana and I function better that way, anyhow. :) So, anyway, I really don't think it's perfect. I would have preferred longer ribbon and if I had more time, I would have made the letters in all lower case instead of upper case. It turned out fine for the party. It got a lot of compliments. And Jake could've really cared less about any of it. Let's face it, the first few parties are for the mom anyhow. Once the kid gets a say in it, it starts being character themed and all that unoriginal nonsense. Ick. I used ribbon, the printed letters on white card stock, blue and red card stock, left over monkey circles that I'd already made (which I'll cover another day) a paper cutter thing (not really sure exactly what it's called) to make sure it was all cut just right, martha stewart paper glue, and a hot glue gun to glue it all to the ribbons. See how simple!? All it really cost was the red ribbon, so $1.50. Everything else, I already had. To buy one of these from Etsy, it would cost you right around $25 + shipping. I'll take my $1.50 banner, thanks. :)

This is what it ended up looking like above his chair.

pretty cute, right?!

 So, there you have it. Party on a budget, but still lookin' pretty darn cute!