Today's craft project is totally brought on by "wanting to further explore the limits of how far I can push certain materials and techniques." Sorry, I was just listening to a modern dancer trying to describe her creative process. The formality must have rubbed off. But seriously: watercolor can show up on way more than card fronts and gift tags.
So let me tell you right now: this is not hard, but this is also not quick. Still with me? Great! To start, you will be following the materials list and excellent tutorial (if I do say so myself) I provided here so you can end up with a page full of stripes like this:
Next, you want to cut your paper up into rectangles. My original paper was 18" x 24", which I ended up trimming into 16 rectangles approximately 4.25" x 6". It's very important to consider how you want your stripes to be on the pennant. You will need to trim the paper one way for vertical stripes, but another for horizontal orientation. You will end up with an awesome pile.
Pile of awesome
Then you will want to decide how you want the bottom of each pennant to look. You can leave it plain, which would be cute, or use decorative edge punches or scissors. You could add pom pom trim or fringe. I opted for a simple point and I felt that with my dimensions, it would look most appropriate to have the tapering start about 2" from the bottom. If you are mathophobic, don't fear. This is easy. All you do is mark a spot on the side 2" from the bottom, Now do this on the other side. Now go and mark the very center of the bottom and then draw lines connecting these points. You'll end up with this:
If you want a "fish tail" pennant instead, all you would do is mark the bottom center, then mark 2" up from that, then draw lines to connect to the bottom corner points. The great news is once you've made one, you can use that as your template for all the other pennants! Once you're done shaping it, it's a wonderful opportunity to add any last minute decorations (letters so it spells out a sentiment, glittery hearts, more decorative punches or scissors). Of course you can just leave it plain as I did.
Now it's time to connect these bad boys up. I have a decoupaged Pringles can (that's what he said). I keep ribbon and trim remnants in it (definitely NOT what he said). I found this fantastic string of tiny pink pearls inside it (um.... I'll pass)!
More pink! And cowbells!
The awful news, of course, was that the strand was too short to just run the length of the garland with sufficient space in between each pennant. That's ok, though! I just cut off pre-determined segments and glued those down. If you have ribbon or other trim that is long enough, you can skip that step and just start tacking it down along the back. Either way, though, I found it was a good idea to weight the flags down a little bit so they would lay flat while I glued (there's a little bit of curl from the watercolor).
I worked in pairs in case I REALLY didn't have enough and had to supplement with another color
Once they are all connected, time to proudly display it! In front of a wall....
...by a washboard, or wherever good times are had!
There are SO many uses for this! Make a matching one in blue for a gender reveal party. Make it a stronger red to go with the blue and have it ready for the 4th of July. Make it in someone's favorite colors for their birthday. The only thing that is set in stone is that you need to make it! Let me know in the comments how you want to use one! In the mean time, stay tuned for a project that wouldn't exist if it weren't for this one (and will prove my solid commitment to crazy, which is always exciting)!