Birthday Decorations

I get happy when I laminate stuff. My mom borrowed my laminator machine for a while, but as soon as I got it back I started shoving things through it. Here's my latest little project. I love that plastic covering. Indestructible.

I made this "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banner that it can be used year after year. I made one for my sister's baby boy and one for my baby girl. Both turn one year old this month!


I started out with some fun papers that I pulled out of my scrap booking stash. Most of them were 12x12 inches, so I cut them down to fit into my printer.

The hardest part of this entire project was printing the outlined font letters. I spent way too much time on this, especially since Brian figured it out in 5 seconds. My memory stinks, so for my own sake, here's what I did: Open Micro Soft Word. Go to INSERT. Click on Word Art. Select the icon with the outline. Type the first letter only. Hold shift and then enlarge the letter to desired size. Print! Right click and edit text for the following letters.

I cut out each letter, (using my paper trimmer for all the straight edges) then sent them through the machine. I was delighted to find that the second set of letters were a bit smaller and I could fit 2 letters into one laminator sheet. Yes, I'm totally a cheap crafter.




Then I hole punched each letter and strung them up with ribbon. The purple ribbon was left over from my wedding decorations....7 YEARS AGO! I knew it would come in handy eventually.

I love these personalized decorations. They are fun, reusable and cost next to nothing!