Ice Cream Bulletin Board and Ruffle Border Tutorial

Welcome back to my Back to School Event! I hope you've been enjoying this week's posts and the guest bloggers. Be sure to stick around because I've got more fun projects and guest post projects coming up! 

Today's project is done by me! :) This post is for teachers mostly, but you could also use the ice cream pattern and ruffle border tutorial I will be providing for party planning, paper crafts, or anything else your crafty little brain can think of. 

(p.s. Sorry about the colors of the photos in this post. The light inside our school hallway is awful.)

Every year teachers wrack their brains for back to school bulletin boards. Of course I ran straight to Pinterest for ideas and found this gem:

Idea found at One Stitch Two Stitch

I thought the idea of ice cream or cupcakes would be so cute. Since I don't especially love cupcakes, I changed the idea to ice cream.

I probably could have found ice cream cut outs at my local Parent Teacher Supply store, but what would have been the fun in that?! So I got some scrapbook paper and made my own.  The scalloped top is supposed to resemble and ice cream shop awning. I got this idea from One Stitch Two Stitch, as well.

Of course, the kids' names go on the ice cream cones. This picture was taken after the names were on the cones, but I blurred them out for their protection so that's why the ice cream looks funny. 

 If you would like to make your own ice creams, you can get my pattern for the scoops and cone here. 

I adapted the actual scoop pattern from here. 

You know this crafter has to work in a little scallop bunting into my bulletin board. :) A tutorial on how to do this is coming up tomorrow!

 On to the ruffle border....

I originally had store-bought border up, but it just didn't look right. I didn't want to make a trip to the store or spend money so I just made my own. I've seen the scrunched paper border on a few teacher blogs before, but I wanted mine to look a little cleaner so I created some ruffles/pleats with the paper.

 You could make the pleats straight all the way across for a clean, polished look...

 or a little wonky for a fun, textured border.

If you'd like to make your own ruffled paper border for your bulletin board or party decor, read on. 

Ruffled Border Tutorial 

Materials needed:

Butcher paper cut into strips

Stapler

(and that may have been the shortest materials list I've written EVER)

 Staple a strip to the top of your bulletin board with the edge flush to the top and the rest of the strip hanging down. Then folded it up on itself and staple. Don't actually crease the fold-let it stay soft-looking and more like a ruffle. 

Keep going and staple each ruffle onto the previous one. Try to cover the staple with the next ruffle, but if you cant', it's ok-it is a bulletin board after all. If you want to change things up, you can staple the ruffles on at angles to create a fun look. When you get to the end just staple the last ruffle up as you can see in the picture above.

 Staple another strip on top of the previous ruffle just like you did before and then make a large first ruffle to cover the edge of the paper so it looks like one continuous ruffle.

I did not take the time to cut my strips the same width or evenly at all so when I was finished my border was everywhere, but that's ok. To make it even just cut up the edge of each side. 

And now you have a nice ruffly border that is FREE! Any teacher loves free.

 I hope you love these ideas as much as I do! 

Have a lovely weekend!

You can read more Back to School posts here!

Come back tomorrow for that easy paper bunting tutorial and the rest of this week for more Back to School fun!

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!