DIY Reversible Fall & Halloween Bunting

Create unique, inexpensive and Reversible Fall & Halloween Bunting for your home with this simple DIY tutorial using Stencils from Martha Stewart Crafts and dollar store craft foams. This bunting will look amazing on your table, mantle, walls etc and is cheap to make. And since it is reversible, you can change it according to the mood of you or your guests to either Fall or Halloween(BOO) to show. All you have to do is just flip it over. 

I love buntings, banners and garlands. They are an inexpensive way to add a festive look to the house and decorate for the party or any occasion. So far, I have only made buntings with paper, coffee filters and/ or cardstock like the Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Banner, Coffee Filter Sun bunting, Birthday Banner using phone book pages, Paper Leaf Banner etc. I would love to make a cloth bunting when I own a sewing machine. This time, I used craft foam sheets and I had no idea I would end up making it a reversible one!
Materials Required: 

• Craft Foam from Dollar Store( mine were 4"X6")
• Foam Brush
• Craft Paint in Fall/ Halloween Colors
• Ribbon or Twine
• 2 Wooden dowels
• Vase filled with lentils
• Martha Stewart Holiday II Adhesive Stencils
• Martha Stewart Glass Adhesive Stencils- Condensed Sans Alphabet
• Martha Stewart Holiday Icons Laser-cut Stencils
• Martha Stewart Bristle Brushes

The Adhesive stencils are great for using on curved surfaces like vases, bottles, and pottery. Plus, they're repositionable and removable for precise placement.  First, stick the adhesive oval dotted stencil on a sheet of craft foam. Using a brush, paint on top of the stencil. Peel the stencil off while the paint is still wet. Then stick on the alphabet stencil in the center of the oval. Now paint over it with contrasting color, do not use a lot of paint. Make sure not to paint beyond the outer edge of the stencil.  

 Peel the alphabet stencil off to reveal your finished painting. I love how neat it looks, thanks to the awesome stencils which really helps non-artist people like me.

 Repeat these steps above for as many craft foam sheets as needed and make it to spell 'F.A.L.L' or anything you fancy. If using the same stencil multiple times, be sure to wipe off any excess paint on the stencil before placing it onto a new position. Here are all the letters of my bunting.

 Next, place the laser cut stencil on the craft foam and paint over it using a sponge brush. I would suggest taping the stencil down to avoid it from moving/slipping. I used foam brush to paint because I love the texture it adds. I painted 2 maple leaves, which will be ends of the bunting.

 After it dried, I noticed that the craft foam does not become wrinkled like paper/card stock which is what I have used for buntings so far. So, I thought maybe I can paint the back of the foam to make a Two-In-One (reversible) bunting. So I flipped the foam sheets over and painted them in a similar manner, this time used the letters 'BOO', a Bat, Jack-O-Lantern and a Cat stencil.  This time for the oval, I chose alternate color paints for the dots.

 To assemble the bunting, punch holes at the top corner of each foam sheet. Then tie one to another with a piece of ribbon or twine. Ta-Da! Your bunting is all ready to go on the wall or mantle. We do not have a mantle in our apartment, so here it is on the wall.

 You could just flip it over to show the 'Halloween' part when required or place it on the table to enjoy seeing both the sides. I simply tied the ends of the bunting to a wooden dowel and placed them inside a tall vase filed with lentils. Paired with my simple DIY Fall Jar lanterns, it became a festive center piece for my table. The fun is that people from one end of the table will see the 'Fall' bunting while those on the opposite side can see the 'BOO'  Halloween part. Love these Jar Lanterns? Check out my DIY Fall Jar Lanterns created with Martha Stewart Crafts stencils.

 

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Disclaimer :  I wrote this post as part of a paid campaign with Plaid Crafts and Blueprint Social. The ideas and opinions in this post are my own.

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Leaf Banner for Yugadi...

Yugadi is on April 4th this year. The word yugadi is from yuga + aadi, yuga means era, aadi means start...the start of an era. It is the New Year for Kannada and telugu speaking people and it ushers in the spring season. The day begins with an elaborate oil bath called as 'abhyanjana'. Rangolis are drawn in front of homes and doors are decorated with a 'thorana' -  mango and neem leaves strung together as seen here.
After prayers there is eating of Bevu-Bella, a mixture of neem leaves/ flowers and jaggery (unrefined whole cane sugar) symbolizes the fact that life is a mixture of sadness and happiness, which should be accepted together and with equanimity.

The telugu people prepare and eat 'ugadi pachadi' which is a special mixture consisting of:

• Neem leaves/Flowers for its bitterness, signifying Sadness
• Jaggery and ripe banana pieces for sweetness, signifying Happiness
• Green Chilli/Pepper for its hot taste, signifying Anger
• Salt for saltiness, signifying Fear
• Tamarind Juice for its sourness, signifying Disgust
• Raw Mango for its tang, signifying Surprise

The family sits together to enjoy an elaborate lunch served on banana leaves.

In the evenings, people gather for the panchanga shravana – reading out from the new hindu calendar about the astrological significance of the new year and predictions of all zodiac signs for the coming year!

I have been talking to putti about all these to putti for the past couple of days. She does recognise the plastic mango leaves thoran which adorns our home door here in US. And for an added activity we tried to make a  festive banner/ bunting. Well since yugadi co-incides with spring.. wanted to make something leafy!

First cut the paper into triangles (big ones so thats easy for putti to paint). Used a fancy scissors to get a nice edge. Then drew the veins onto them with white/ green crayons. Later putti painted on them with foodcolors.

  

 

Allowed them to dry...

After they dried, putti wrote the letters on them as i dictated ..

and then we punched holes and strung them together!

 

Happy Yugadi :)) 

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Colorful banner for Holi the festival of colors

This is the colorful banner putti painted for Holi the festival of colors. I had got these paper as packaging material sometime ago. I asked putti to fill with colors as she loves and she was soo happy to do it. She had a wonderful time. These days she insists there should not be gaps on the paper without paint, so she carefully touches up the gap:) After the paint was dry, she wrote the greetings letters as i told her. She asked me to write it in kannada. And this time she wanted to cut the alphabets herself and she did a great job and I am so proud of her cuttings skills:)) Finally we glued the letters onto our banner.

  

  

 

Wishing you all a colorful Holi !!!

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Happy Makara Sankranti !!!

Its so easy for kids growing in India to learn about our festivals. They dont need any special books or clases to teach them that. A quick tour to the local grocery stores during the festival will enlighten us about the significance of any festival.
But for my putti is growing far away from all these, we need to put in our efforts to teach her. The schools here read books/ do art and craft and sing songs about the particular celebration that whole month. I too decided to take the same path to teach putti.

For sankranti, i wanted to make a powerpoint slideshow, but due to the cold n cough that has been running in the family for over a mnth now.. i wasnt able to do any of that. But did show a couple of pics on google images and talked to her about sankranti.
We have made a banner for it though. Putti loves to paint on coffee filter paper, as the colors spread so well and blend easily too. We have played with it previously too. I just folded the paper and trimmed the edges to make them look like sun. Gave putti yellow, orange and red to paint. She enjoyed painting them. Later stick the printed kannada letters on them.

Wishing you all a very happy Makara Sankranti !!!

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Birthday banner !!

We decided its art party for putti this time, but i was wondering where to get art theme deco items from? And later thought i should involve putti to make one herself, that would be fun. We have made a board for her art wall earlier. I decided to work on same lines.
So first i tore off a few pages from our telephone mini directory and asked putti to paint them. I wanted her to use all the colors, but she was very adamant that day and wanted only 'orange'. And towards the end she did agree to paint them yellow!
While these were drying, she wrote the various alphabets on a white paper. Later i cut the alphabets. We then glued these alphabets onto the colored papers, punched holes and threaded them all.
How do you like this kid made banner?

 

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