Bonjour Banner

My brother's birthday was coming up a while ago, so I wanted to figure out some fun decorations that would reflect his interests. He has always loved France, and he and his wife dream of travelling there some day. I decided that it would be interesting to somehow incorporate France into the decor, so I began earlier this evening by making a banner that simply says "Bonjour". My brother also enjoys nature and the French countryside, so I chose more natural colors and textures for the banner.
This banner has almost the same layout as the one on my "Spring Banner" post, so I actually used that post as a guide to create this one!
I began by printing the letters on some textured brown paper, and cutting them out. I used a dark brown pastel on the edges of the letters to create more definition, before gluing them down. I found out that this is a lot easier and less messy than using pastel after you have glued the letters down.

Then, I cut the background pages down from 12 x 12 to 10 x 12 rectangles. I glued the leftover 2 inch strips of paper onto the bottom edge of each background.

To give the banner a bit more texture, I added strings from burlap to the center of each 2 inch strip. I simply sat down with a piece of burlap and picked it apart. 

I cut the strings to ten inches long, and glued four strings to each strip of paper, after the strips of paper were glued to the backgrounds.The easiest type of glue to use for both of these things is hot glue. It dries incredibly fast, and isn't too bumpy when you're working with thick pieces of paper. For the burlap strings, I just added one drop of hot glue to each end of the paper and pressed the strings into the glue (wait a bit before pressing them down, because otherwise you'll end up burning your fingers).

Since I wanted green to be the only bright color, I went through our buttons and picked out all of the green ones (hopefully I won't regret this later, when I can't seem to find any green buttons for other projects). I randomly added these to the banner.

Once everything else had been laid out and glued down, I finally glued the letters down. It's easier to add them at the end, because then you can center them according to what you already have on the backgrounds. 

The glue that I originally used for the letters didn't hold very well, so I went back and used hot glue. 

That was pretty much it for the design! All that was left to do was to hole punch the top two corners of each background, and put string through the holes. 

It's finished! Although it took quite a while to complete, this banner was very easy to create. Another great thing about it is the fact that you do not need a bunch of fancy supplies and tools to create it. At first, I had no idea what I was going to use to embellish the banner, but I was able to just use some old things that were leftover or in our craft room (buttons, burlap, scraps of paper)!