Back to School Burlap Banner

My wonderful children went back to school on Tuesday and life is good. To celebrate the occasion I made a back-to-school bunting (that’s what those pendant banners are called) that we can use again every year. Here’s Smart Jr heading off to 8th grade.

You might be wondering, ‘Who has time to craft with a house full of demolition?’ And the answer, of course, is ME.

Finding the time wasn’t even the hard part, it was finding the space. So to kill several birds with one stone (not literally, of course) I grabbed all the supplies I needed and headed to the lake with my kids. It was Labor Day and all the families in our neighborhood (well at least the coolest 20 or so families) were getting together to celebrate the last day of summer vacation. I didn’t want to miss the festivities, so I made my banner while I sipped champagne. No really, I did.

So what did I bring to the lake that day? Mostly a bunch of stuff I had lying around, except for the burlap (go figure). So I did have to run over to Jo-Ann and by a yard, which set me back $2.99.

Supplies to make a burlap banner:

acrylic paint — 8 oz. gold, 2 oz. black and pink
paint brushes – 1 big and 1 or 2 small
1 yard of burlap
scissors
twine (like this)
glue gun
something to pour paint in
something to paint on

How to make a burlap banner:

Instead of the usual triangles, I wanted pencils, because it was a back-to-school banner after all. I totally made up the measurements and cut 6″ strips out of the burlap while sitting in my beach chair. I may or may not have accidentally cut the handle of my tote bag while trying to multitask. Then I folded and cut each strip into thirds, which gave me a total of twelve 6″ x 15″ rectangles.

Each rectangle was then folded in half so I could snip a triangle off one end — this made the pencil point.

In an effort to keep the burlap from fraying, I painted on some decoupage around the edges of the first couple of pendents, but dude, that got old fast. Turns out the paint does a fine job of stiffening up the burlap and keeping it from fraying, so I just skipped that step from then on.

I painted the yellow part first using a foam brush. *Make sure to put the burlap on top of something because the paint will go right through the fabric. Luckily I remembered to bring paper for this, otherwise my beach-chair-turned-table would have paint all over it. FYI – I used almost the entire 8 oz bottle of gold paint.

Thank you to my friend Melissa who snapped a couple pictures of me, otherwise you guys might be inclined to think I make this stuff up.Then with a small paint brush (dipped directly into the bottle of acrylic paint) I painted the black pencil led (or whatever it’s made of these days) and the two stripes at the top, which are supposed to be the metal part that hold the eraser on.

Then I hung them up to dry from my beach umbrella. Thank you to Megan for the idea and the clips.

When the pencils were (sorta) dry I laid them out on the picnic table benches and painted on the letters. I was going for rustic, so I just free-handed them. Ain’t nobody got time for stencils. 😉

The last thing I painted was the pink eraser, which you could totally skip because it looks cute enough without it.I ran home and got my glue gun and sat by the lifeguards and glued each pencil to a long piece of twine. I simply folded the burlap over the twine and glued it to itself. Now if only someone got a picture of that. It was pretty funny. Even Smart Jr thought I was crazy. Whatever.

Here’s the whole gang of kids. Yup, that’s my kid in his Daddy’s arms, all thanks to his sister who decided to punch him in the face right when we were ready to take the picture. Seriously, thank goodness school was starting the next day.The banner was finished in time for dinner and my friend Ron helped me hang it between two trees. It was a BYOM (meat) kind of night and the guys grilled up anything and everything that showed up.

The next day I hung the new banner on the garage… and so began our new 1st day of school ritual. Makeup might be a good ritual I should look into too.