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children's parties, children's party, children's party planning, craft supplies, crafts, event planning, Gryffindor Banner, harry potter, Harry Potter banners, harry potter party, Harry Potter Signs, Hogwarts House Banners, Hufflepuff Banner, paper crafts, party, party planning, Ravenclaw Banner, Slytherin Banner
These banners were super simple to make. I just didn’t complete them right away because I was nervous about cutting my foam pieces. I get so weird about my crafts sometimes. Does that happen to anyone else? Some things I can’t wait to get started and some things I’m too nervous so I put them off.
I wish I had a craft buddy that I could just talk things over with and who would be there helping me just for the moral support. I’m sounding a little weird right now, yes? But seriously, I have the stuff for my Monster Book of Monsters but I haven’t started assembling it yet because I’m scared! I’m worried I won’t be able to do it or that it will look horrible or I’ll screw something up and so I’m putting it off.
I just finished a giant time turner (I think that will be my next post) but I put that one off too because I was so nervous about working with the Styrofoam. But now that it’s done, I’m so happy it all turned out. I’m hoping the same will be true for my Monster Book. I’m super excited for it to be done but I’m too nervous to start working on it. I just wish I had a crafter friend here to help me.
Anywho, back to these super simple banners.
I purchased the foam sheets from Michael’s Craft Store. I got two pieces for each house in the house colors. So that means two yellow (or gold if they have it) and two grey (or silver if they have it), one green, one red (or burgundy if they have it), one blue and one black. You can also use large pieces of felt but I like the way the foam had some structure to it. I really like the cloth banners I’ve seen, but fabric is so expensive that’s why I decided to go with this less expensive option. If you want to purchase pre-made banners you can get them on Amazon, but again, they’re more expensive then making them this way.
Next I printed off the house crests for each of the four Hogwarts’ Houses. Just do an image search and find a crest that you like. After sizing them and printing them off on cardstock, I cut them out. And since I plan on using my decorations a number of times, I went ahead and had the crests laminated. But you can save yourself a few dollars if you want because they were nice and sturdy even before I had them laminated.
Then I needed to cut my foam. Like I mentioned earlier, I was nervous about cutting my foam out just because I wasn’t sure I could make it look the way I wanted it to and I only had one shot at cutting the foam (unless I wanted to go buy more). So to make sure I got it right, I first took some paper (my sons have pads of paper that are really large so I borrowed a few pieces) and cut the paper to the size of the foam sheets I had.
After I cut my sheets of paper, I started playing around with the folds. When I figured out how I wanted the final, cut foam pieces to look, I cut the paper along the final folds I liked and then used that as a template for cutting my foam pieces.
With the foam pieces cut, I spread super glue on the edges of the two colored pieces that would be attached to one another. I pressed the pieces together and laid it flat to dry. I carefully moved them a bit to make sure they didn’t get stuck to the surface of the (covered) table beneath them. I would recommend testing your glue on some scrap foam (or whatever material you use) before using it on your final cut pieces. Some glue might not work (I tried craft glue first and it didn’t hold) or it might eat away at your materials. If you’re using fabric then I would recommend sewing or else there’s always special fabric glue you can try.
Once the pieces were glued together, I glued my crest onto the front. Then I cut some dowel rods to fit the width of the banner and super glued them to the top of the banner on the back. Do whatever you think looks best, I just thought mine looked best by not having any part of the dowel rod showing. I can now hook my string or ribbon around the dowel rod and hang them that way or just put a couple hooks on the wall and hang the dowel rod straight on the hook.
Here’s the finished product!