Retro Patrio

I am such a patriotic person that I decided to make this banner and hang it year round in my house.
Not really.
The truth is I have had the materials for this sitting on my desk since summer began and never got it done so I finally did it this week. Now it's all packaged up and stored away for a year. Ha! It's the ghetto way I suppose. It was really fun to do, though- and now I want to make more. For some reason I've been in a banner mode and been saving ideas. I kept getting ideas to do more to this as I was going, like adding a star behind each letter or little flag ribbon between the letters, or even flags.... but guess what? It's freakin' August and that stuff is not for sale anymore. Which is good because I do that- I get going and get more ideas which hinder completion in a timely manner. So I stuck with the plan and finished it. Hopefully it will inspire you to make one of your own.
Here is a rough breakdown of what I did in case you would like to copy cat:
-The beaded garland was something I bought at a little shop in the spring- I bought two boxes and joined them in the center.
-Glued paper to chipboard (or matboard would work) and cut down to rectangles, then forked the ends.
-Used crepe paper and tissue paper that I edged with pinking scissors, crimped/folded into circles and glued onto the flags (For the glitter edge on the white- I glued glitter on the pinked edge first, let it dry and then glued to the board flags).
-Glittered chipboard letters and glued them to the tissue/crepe circles.
-Hole punched the corners of the board, cut wire pieces and bent into ovals that could slide along the beaded strand with the beads (but not slide into each other, keeping them in place) and looped them through the holes and onto the strand.

Now for some Halloween! (After I clear other crap off my desk. i.e. finish more projects. :))