Fourth of July Banner!

I try not to buy a lot of decorations because they usually end up ruined. I "forget" to put them away and they get wrinkled and smashed and I feel guilty for wasting the money on them. I won't lie here...I am still working on my organizational skills! We usually make birthday banners for each other out of a huge roll of white paper we have had for 20 years! I like that better anyway! 

This year I decided to make a 4th of July banner since I didn't want to buy one. I just went to the hardware store and stole some stuff instead! Works for me! Now let me explain...I made my banner out of paint sample cards. Technically those are free for the taking right? They probably don't expect that people would take 30 of them, but I did! I don't think they saw me taking that many so, in all honesty, I felt like I was being sneaky and bad. I got over that pretty quick and went to work.

Here's what I did, and it took me about ten minutes. I think it would be a fun kid project, but I'm not limiting it to just kids. I'm thinking about going and getting one sample of a whole bunch of colors and making one for a friend's birthday. These are easy and cute!

This is all you need! Some twine or string, a hole punch, and paint sample cards.

First I decided what order I wanted the colors in. Obviously this was easy...I just did red, white, blue, repeat! Notice I had a "helper" who wasn't such a big help. His "help" made this project take more time than it should have, but I don't mind.

I gathered up a bunch of cards and started punching my holes. Do two holes in each card. They hang better that way!

All of the holes were done and here's what they looked like. Nothing has to be perfect here, my friends! Don't stress yourself out over this! 

OKAY! The hardest part for me was finding an end on the string. Seriously?! I looked at it for a fifteen minutes. Finally, I gave up and cut my own end into the roll. I like to play by the rules so I wouldn't usually do that....oh, and it's my husband's roll of string. He won't mind!

So with the end cut I got stringing! EASY as pie. Once that's done you will need to decide how close together you want your paint cards to hang in the banner. I like this look or further apart. It's a matter of personal taste here. Not a big deal.

I decided to string mine a little further apart so with that done, I had my helper chew on the string a little bit. Sorry for the dark picture...I'm working on that.

Here's the done deal! I think it turned out great. I hung it in the house quick to show you what it looks like done. When it's not a hundred degrees I'm going to hang it out on the fence for the weekend!

Now head to the paint store and gather up some samples! DON'T tell them I sent you!

Have a fabulous holiday weekend! Hope you spend some time with family eating good food, drinking fun drinks, and enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather!

Stacy