Brickhouse Banners: A Paper Rosette DIY Tutorial

Taking a break from wedding posts to talk about paper rosettes. We'll just entitle this:

Brickhouse Banners

I started making banners for family parties and am toying with the idea of selling them, but I always make the same style, similar to this:

My first banner, made on a whim for my brother's welcome home party. 

 When I got the invitation for my cousin's fiancee's bridal shower, I decided it was time to switch it up and try something new. 

I saw some ideas for Fourth of July decorations on a website (not Pinterest) and decided to try rosettes using crepe paper. The directions on the website weren't too descriptive, but how hard could it be? It involved a piece of crepe paper cut to 8" x 20", and then you glued two strips of crepe paper on top in different colors, and folded like an accordion. Well they looked god awful. Turns out crepe paper is difficult to work with.

So, I set out scouring the internet for a paper rosette tutorial and they were all terrible. None gave measurements whatsoever! They basically said to have a piece of paper 12" long, fold like an accordion, glue the two ends together, push the center in to flatten it out, and it should be perfect. Many failed attempts later, they weren't even close to perfect. So here I am to tell everyone how to make the perfect paper rosette --now, including measurements!

To start off, I would recommend buying the Martha Stewart Crafts Scoring Board and Envelope Tool. It is just over $13 on Amazon and it is amazing! I wasn't going to buy it at first, and just make the accordions by hand, but I am so glad I bought it because it made it so much easier, and I will totally use it for other projects!

I used 12" x 12" scrapbook paper and 8.5" x 11" cardstock. I wanted to have layered rosettes on the banner, so I made some strips that were 2.25" wide and some were 3.0" wide (and 11 or 12 inches long). 

There is a ruler at the top and sides of the scoring board, and it comes with a bone folder. For the 2.25" wide strips, I scored them every 1/4 of an inch. For the 3" wide strips, I scored them every 1/2". Here's what I didn't find on other tutorials: two strips are needed for one rosette. I tried scoring every 1", but it didn't work out (I have a feeling it might have worked had I used three strips instead of two, but didn't attempt it).

Once all the strips are scored to the proper width, line two up end to end to make the first rosette. You want to glue them together so there is a seamless transition from one strip to the other (so the zigzags all flow together). 

Here I had to cut off a little piece from the one strip. Below you can see how the piece on the right is going to sit like a hat on the left piece, so there is a seamless transition. 

I put hot glue on the piece on the left before sliding the piece from the right, on top. Then, you're going to do the same to the other ends, so they form a circle. 

Next, you're going to pinch the top and push down to flatten the circle. 

And, voila!

Squeeze the edges to make the center smaller,  and put hot glue in the middle to hold it all together. I like to put a piece of scrap paper over it, for extra security.

Hold down until mostly dry, so it all stays together.

For the 2.25" strips where I scored every 1/4", I probably could have gotten away with shorter strips (length wise), because I had to really squeeze them together to glue the center close enough to glue, but they still turned out nice.

I went through a lot of hot glue and burned my fingers a lot, but am so happy with the finished product! I still have to figure out how hang them perfectly, but they still look pretty awesome. 

So, who wants a banner!?

  

Programs

I had no idea how much time went into blogs when I came up with the idea to start this one (not that I envisioned posting daily, but more frequently than I do). 

Anywho...on to Programs...

When I come up with a theme, I tend to go a little over-board. Enter my programs...I wanted them to look like a book, so this is what I came up with.

Of course I had to include my pugs.

I added some footnotes to give the guests a couple of facts throughout the program.

After this "title page," I had the sections "Introduction", "The Ceremony", and "Epilogue". In the Introduction section, I listed out the participants (officiant, singer, musician, parents, bridal party, etc.). The Ceremony section is self-explanatory (order of events, who the readers are, yada, yada, yada). I added the Epilogue section pretty much because I needed another page. That section basically said where the reception was and to bring your dancing shoes! All together it was about 8 pages. We had free parking for our guests and they needed a placard to park there, so we included that on the back cover of the program (turns out they had to turn in the placard to park there, instead of placing it on the dashboard, so that plan backfired).

My sister is always making custom labels for gifts and other designy/crafty things like that and she told me that she uses PowerPoint to make her projects (go figure!). I decided to try it for my programs and signs that I put up around the wedding, and absolutely loved it! I don't know how to use Photoshop and found PowerPoint so easy to use. It's easy to move the textboxes around to where I wanted them. It's even easy using pictures, like the pugs I used for the "publishing" logo.

The hubs and I printed these out ourselves and the hubs put them together. We used 32lb ivory paper for the inner pages since we were printing on both sides of the paper, so it wouldn't show through on the other side. For the cover we used a 90lb ivory cardstock, so it was a little thicker and sturdier. Then we used a long reach stapler to put the programs together. I absolutely loved the way they came out!