Birthday Banner

My MIL turned 50 this March, and I offered to help with the decorations. FIL wanted to do the traditional black "you're SO OLD" decor, and I got to do all the shopping (yay!). For some reason nobody had black or black and white Happy Birthday banners. Even the party stores! They'd have all of this over the hill black and white stuff...and then a rainbow colored banner. Fail.

I remembered seeing this adorable birthday banner on Life in the Fun Lane and I decided to attempt my own.
I used Holly's fabulous tutorial, except instead of staining the paper with coffee I printed the letters on a gray background of swirls and flowers, and used black poster board for the larger circles.

I was thrilled with how it turned out! (I think I'm always thrilled with my crafts...oh well!) It was a change from the boring foil banners and it looked classy and frilly and pretty. I love it. I also curled the leftover ribbon ends after hanging, so they weren't just dangling there.

From start to finish this took me two episodes of The King of Queens, so about an hour, and cost me almost nothing. I paid 50 cents for the poster board, $1 for the crepe paper (which I used half a roll of-and it came with two rolls) and I already had everything else. Not bad for an hour of craftiness and .75 cents!

Sorry for the crummy photos! In hindsight I should not have taken them against a gray wall on a dark, gray rainy day. oh well, Holly's photos are awesome and you get the point!