Banner Time

My mom is a music nut. She has played piano since she was 9 and organ since the age of 15. She is still a church organist and also teaches lessons from home, along with various gigs accompanying high school and college musicians for recitals, etc. Her front living room is her piano studio, complete with a baby grand, an upright baby grand, and a couple of electric keyboards plus many shelves and piles stacks of music. :) I have seen a lot of banners on different blogs but Kelly Lunceford's are top notch. I followed her tutorial to make this gift for Mom's birthday, using a pennant shape rather than the notched rectangles. It now resides on a shelf in her studio.

Again, I tried a "vintage lite" look, using watermark effect stamped images and edge sponging on the pennants. The medallions are made from Newsprint DSP, edged in different colors of Stickles. I highlighted the glittery letters with distressed cardstock circles and small pre-made epoxy accents. The pennants are also topped using the Scallop Trim edge punch. I used the same colors for the flags and toppers. Originally, I had a Cameo Coral flag but I decided it was just too out of place, so I scrapped it.

Above - a closer look at the Always Artichoke "M" flag, topped with Marina Mist. I edged this one with a strip of Very Vanilla, punched with the Scallop Edge Punch. I chose the butterfly from the Nature Walk stamp set, tone-on-tone in Artichoke ink. 

You can see it best in this shot - I sprayed the whole thing lightly with Silver Foil Smooch Spritz. Above, I used retired Close to Cocoa and stamped with the Elements of Style set, and finished with sponging.

I used many stamp sets, quite a few retired colors, and a lot of non-SU items for this project, so I won't detail... This was a good learning project for me. For instance, I wouldn't assemble a banner before delivering it. I had to carefully pull off some of the bows and re-staple the pennants when we got to Mom's. I definitely would not do this as a mailed gift unless the recipient had some crafting savvy to assemble it.