Flag Bunting Tutorial and Free Printable Template

You may remember this sweet little paper flag bunting from back in May when I threw Mr. Lovie a 30th birthday party. I made this bunting to hang on top of the torn fabric garland I made that went over the food table. 

If you want to make your own torn fabric garland, you should! They're easy and beautiful...I got the idea for mine at Kojo Designs! Since I made my own flags for the bunting, I thought I'd go ahead and share the template I made up and how I made it. It's totally easy and I'm sure most of you wouldn't need a tutorial on this, but here it is anyway, just in case! 

 Materials:

White card stock

Scrapbook paper (you can fit 2 flags per large square)

Flag Bunting Template

Ribbon

Glue

Exact-o Knife

Pencil

Marker 

(for drawing letters or you can make letters out of something else)

First, make your flags. Print template onto white card stock once. Cut out. This is your template. Use your pencil and template to trace flags onto scrapbook paper and circles onto white card stock. Cut those out. Draw letters on white circles (or use die cuts, or whatever).  

Glue circles on each flag.  Glue them lower than you would think. Not completely centered-just below that. I promise it'll look right when you have the ribbons on there.

Next, use the exact-o knife to cut slits on each side of the flag. I used my cutting mat to measure where the cuts should be. My measurements were 1/4 inch down from top and over from edge and the cut was about 3/4 inch long (this would depend on the width of your ribbon that you are threading through, also).  

 Then, thread your ribbon through each slit, connecting the flags to one another and tie a bow. When you slide the ribbon through, both ends should be coming out on top, and make sure to be consistent with which flag sits on top. My flag to the right always sat on top of the flag to the left. It seems silly to be so exact, but it really makes it more professional looking (there are totally professional paper flag buntings out there...). 

 Tie a regular bow. (I had to show the picture of the real thing, because the ribbon I was using to demonstrate how to thread the ribbon was so terrible. Please use cute ribbon!) You can also tie a bow around the outside edge just like you did on the flags that connected each other. (See below.)

Ta Da! Easy. I finished this project (drawing the letters and all) in a couple hours one evening. Now to attach it... Here I just taped it on the wall, but you could do it a number of ways. On the torn fabric garland above, I simply thread small pieces of extra ribbon through the slits at the ends of the bunting and tied them to the garland. You could also slide longer bits of ribbon through the holes on the ends and tie it on something to hang. 

Hope you like it! You could even scale down the template and make tiny flags! Ooh!

Enjoy the free template! 

Linking to the parties on my side bar and

See you soon!