Pinspiration Monday (a day late): DIY Paper Bunting Flag

This is the story of a very tired girl…She was a week and a half away from her wedding day, scrambling to get the last few projects out of the way. “I’d love to have a beautiful, whimsical bunting flag to hang as decoration, but where oh where am I going to find the time to cut and sew multiple little fabric flags??!” she lamented to herself. It was a terrible, terrible predicament to be in. But hark! What’s this?! A knight in shining armor that went by the name of “Pinterest” galloped to the rescue and saved the poor tired bride from expending her last little bit of energy on one final project!! The solution was presented and the day was saved…The end.

Source: A Subtle Revelry 

The magical solution? Instead of wasting hours and hours on cutting, hemming, sewing and stringing a dozen little triangles of fabric to a line, I was inspired to simplify into paper triangles. Eliminating the need to sew was the biggest time-saver and it gave me the motivation I needed to knock this last little project off of my mental to-do list. (I do apologize for the quality of the photos in this post…I started the project late in the afternoon of a rainy day, so there was little natural light to speak of)

Supplies:

  • Scrapbooking paper
  • Twine
  • Hot glue gun and glue stick refills
  • Wooden clothespins
  • A pen
  • Ruler
  • Scissors

First of all, I needed a template – A thick paper triangle to use as my guide for all of the little triangle “flags” I would cut out. I didn’t have any thick cardstock on hand, but I did have the back of my scrapbook paper book, which just so happened to be made of thick cardboard.

To make my flag template, I used the ruler as a straightedge and just eye-balled it. The top of the flag was shorter than the two sides. It’s not exactly perfect, but I didn’t really need it to be – You all know by now that organic is A-OK by my standards.

Then it was just a matter of cutting out my flags. I used this scrapbooking paper scrap that I had on hand as a guinea pig of sorts, just to see if the project would actually work. I  flipped the scrapbook paper over, used the pen to draw around the template and then cut it out. To my glee, it worked like a charm.

Now to cut out a dozen or so more…I wanted the bunting line to be as colorful as possible, so I didn’t bother trying to find pages that necessarily matched. I wanted vibrancy, pattern and texture – I think I managed to achieve that with my selection. Goodness gracious, I LOVE scrapbooking paper!

Fast forward twenty-five minutes or so, and we were all done with the flag portion of the project.

Next, I needed to attach them to some kind of a string. To continue the organic, garden-y feel of the piece, I used plain natural twine. To attach the paper flags, I flipped the flags over, ran a thin line of hot glue at the top and gently settled the twine into the gooey adhesive.

Using the ruler to measure out approximately an inch, I grabbed my next paper flag and ran another line of hot glue at the top and attached that to the twine – And so on and so forth…

Flipping the string over and seeing all of the pretty colors and patterns work with one another down the line, I started to get really giddy…

But I wasn’t done yet. To finish off the bunting, I took a cue from my Pinspiration image and clipped a wooden clothespin to the center of each paper flag – It obviously serves more of a decorative purpose since the hot glue is what actually holds the flag to the line, but again, it’s that little styling that gives it the casual look I was going for.

Sorry to make you guys wait for the actual “After” photo of the line decorating the reception venue, but I’ll be sure to update you once we get the wedding photos back from our (AMAZING) photographer. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Here are a couple wedding photos to show you what the final product looked like up on the walls of our reception venue! I hope to hang them somewhere in the house soon, so I may have more photos to come. Stay tuned!

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