Valentines Day Banner – Ready in Minutes!

OMG when I said this valentines day banner is quick and easy — I’m not lying.  Once you cut out all your cardstock strips (hello papercutter), the assembly is soooo quick and easy. I mean, you could assemble this valentines day banner watching an episode of Emily in Paris…and have time leftover to drool over her outfits (and hot Paris men).

Prefer to watch (and hear my lovely voice) over reading?  Head on over to the YouTube tutorial here.

These are the supplies you’ll need for your valentines day banner:

• Paper Cutter or scissors
• ruler
• paper strips 
• stapler, preferably a smaller, skinny one
• tape
• twine to match your cardstock paper
• pencil
• 1/8″ Hole Punch or a regular hole punch will do

Now for your paper strips, you’ll want the following lengths.  They are all 1″ wide:

• two 10″ long strips
• two 8″ long strips
• three 6″ long strips

The reason you need 3 of the 6″ long strips is because one of those strips will be the middle piece, how your banner will hang from your twine.  Feel free to mix different patterns, colors and designs, however you would like.  For example, in my valentines day banner, I chose 2 patterned papers and a solid red, and just changed the position of each of the strips in each of my hearts.

1. The first step is to make a few markings on that 6″ hanging strip.  With a ruler, measure 1″ and 3″ from the top of the strip and make a small line across.  The 1″ line will mark where you will hole punch, and the 3″ line is a guide to show you where to bend your cardstock strips in order to make the heart shape.  This will become more clear as we assemble the banner.
2. Next, you’ll need to gather your cardstock pieces together.  This is the trickiest part of the assembly, but if you follow these directions, you won’t mess up!  Hold one of your 10″ pieces in your hand with the design facing you.  Then take an 8″ piece and put it behind the 10″ piece with the design facing you.  Line up the bottom of the strips together.  Then, take one of your 6″ pieces and do the same, design facing you, with the bottoms of the pieces together.  Then comes the 6″ piece that you made your markings on.  Add that behind the other 6″ piece with the design facing you.  Now, you’ll do the same for the next three pieces, lining all of the them up at the bottom, but the difference is, the last 3 pieces will have the design facing away from you.  So, you’ll gather the last 6″, 8″ and 10″ piece with the design facing out.  Line up all 7 pieces at the bottom and staple them perpendicularly.  Please see the picture above.
3. Then, break off 2 small pieces of tape and keep them handy.  Now, gather three strips together (with the design facing you) and line up the tops of the strips together.  When you do this, the paper will naturally curve because they are different lengths.  Take one piece of tape and tape the three strips together at the top.  Turn your heart around and do the same to the other side.  Gather all three strips with the design facing you, line them up at the top, and secure them together using a piece of tape.  The tape is only to help keep them together so that it will be easier to handle your strips for the next step.
4. Next, take one of your taped sets of strips, and curve them inwards towards the center 6″ strip, and find the 3″ mark you made on that strip.
5. Hold that set of strips at that mark, and do the same with the other side.  You’ll want to use your fingertips to hold the strips in place on both sides of that 3″ mark.  Your heart should look like this.  Now, taking your stapler, staple the curved strips to your center 6″ strip to secure your strips in place.  2 staples should be enough to secure it together.  Below is what your heart should look like now.  You’ll notice that if you decided to curve your strips to a higher point on your 6″ strip, say at the 2″ mark, your heart will change its shape.  Feel free to experiment with what shape you prefer.  Continue building as many hearts as you like.  Anywhere from 3 hearts to 6 would look nice for your valentines day banner depending on where you’re stringing them from.
6. Now we have to turn these hearts into banner.  Using your hole punch, punch a hole at the 1″ mark you made on that center 6″ strip.  Do the same with all your hearts.  Then, take your twine and string all of your hearts together through the holes you just made. And voila!  You’re done!  You made your valentines day banner faster than it took you to read this blog post. LOL Didn’t I tell you this was easy peasy?

The other great thing is that you DON’T have to just use this for Valentine’s Day. You could totally use this for Mother’s Day and use your mom’s favorite colors as the cardstock colors. This would work great for engagement parties or bridal showers and use the couple’s initials in between the hearts.

And get this —  there are SO many ways to customize this banner. You can add paper flowers or other decorative items in between the hearts. You can change the color or pattern of your strips to match the occasion. You can even change the width and length of your strips to make a mini banner or a cake banner. The possibilities are endless.

Let me know in the comments if you made this valentines day banner and how it turned out!  Happy Valentine’s Day, ya’ll!