July 4th banner

My husband is from a small town, and since it is high in the mountains, "everyone" doesn't come home at Christmastime, but during the summer when it is easy to travel! So the 4th of July is one of our favorites holidays to go back to his hometown and see a lot of friends! I like decorating my home in the summer in patriotic decor,  I've made a wreath and we have lots of flags around in vases too.

I've been looking online for some July 4th banners to make, and I found one made of felt that I really liked (I can't find it online now, sorry!). I thought about going to the craft store and buying felt to make it, but then I decided I would make one with what I had on hand. If I do go to the craft store soon, I may buy some different ribbon to attach to the banner. I had chip board pieces that I cut into squares for this banner, and I used my Craft stamp pads to color them red, white and blue. The stars & letters for USA I colored with the stamp pads too, and I made them red, blue and silver. I had star-shaped eyelets that I used to put the silver cord through at the top. 

Some of the background squares did not get totally colored using the stamp pads, they look distressed, which I didn't intend to do, but I really liked! I didn't have any capital letters in my chip board on hand, so I used lower case, which is ok. I had some red, white & blue striped ribbon on hand, so I used pieces of that in between the chip board squares. I really like how it turned out!

This took me a few days to finish, because the inks took a while to dry. The silver was hard to glue onto, especially the S. I used mini-glue dots to attach all the chipboard pieces together. If you don't have chip board, you can use thin card board, like what you get in a package of construction paper.

Need more patriotic decoration ideas? Check out this blog hop here.