Halloween Banner Giveaway, and a little how- to.

*giveaway is closed*

Remember how I told you my fireplace mantle was still missing "something"? Well I decided to take a sewing break this week and make a banner for it. (I have to take a sewing break every once and a while or I burn out, I learned this the hard way a couple of years ago).

Oh, my it has not stopped raining around here! I was waiting for a sunny day to take photos of the banner, but it is not going to happen! So I did my best with the light I had. I wanted to get the giveaway up today... if the light improves, I'll change out the photos, just know there is LOTS of glitter that is not very sparkly in the photos.

I'm really happy with how it turned out and even more happy that I used stuff that I already had in my stash.

Guess what?....
I made more than ONE!!!

So I thought I'd do a giveaway here! If you'd like to win this Halloween banner you can enter 2 ways.

1- Leave a comment on this post. It can be anything you want, a comment, a question for me, an observation- but if it's not nice.. it might not stay there :-)

2- Mention &; link back to this giveaway on your blog. - it' okay to post a photo-  If you do this, leave a SEPERATE comment on this post and let me know that you did (plus I'd love to see your blog!). This will give you a second entry.

I'm closing the contest next Tuesday, October 13th at Midnight Eastern time.  I'm headed out of town week after next and want to get this baby mailed off before I leave!

I'll draw a winner via random integer generator next week, from the comments.



Now, if you are thinking you'd like to make your own Halloween banner, it's pretty simple. Just gather a bunch of black and white paper, ink the edges with walnut ink to give them an "old" look, use LOTS of black and orange glitter, and raid your scrapbook stash for any Halloween themed embellishment you have. Most of my supplies came from Jenni Bowlin, Martha Stewart & Making Memories. The letters were cut with my cricut, but if you don't have one, don't fret, you can buy pre made chip board letters that would be perfect.

The hardest part is getting the triangles that make up the banner.  So here's a little "how to" (not quite detailed enough for a tutorial, so I'll call it a how-to)...

For the Black bases you will want to cut your cardstock to 6x9 (using white for demonstration purposes, since the black is too hard to photograph)

*sorry, need a better lens for close up work it's a bit out of focus*

find the center of the short side (the 6" side)

cut from the outside corner to the center.

repeat for the other side.

 You have your triangle.

For the pattern paper pieces you want a slightly smaller triangle, cut those pieces 5 1/2" x 8 1/4 ".  Repeat the above steps.  On the pattern paper pieces I made 1 template then traced it on my pattern paper. That way I made sure I got the section of the pattern paper that I wanted to use on each banner piece.

One last tip. I used eyelets in the corners of my banner, that way when I strung my ribbon though it would not tear the paper.

Have fun and enter away! (oh, if Halloween isn't your thing, I'll be doing another giveaway next month, watch for that one)