Build a Banner for Avery

A couple of posts back I mentioned that my granddaughter, Avery, was turning 4.  This week I worked on two other items for her birthday, a banner and her cake.  The banner I’m very happy with, more on that later, the cake…well I’ll let you be the judge.  And as her mother told me, “It’s just a 4 year old birthday party, Mom, don’t stress out over it”.  Good advice.

First the Banner.

1.  I used the Build a Banner kit from the Holiday Occasions catalogue.  It comes with alpha letter stencils, 4 background stencils and 18 canvas banners.  Using rubbing alcohol. my reinkers, and a spritzer I spritzed away.  Luckily I needed exactly 18 banners.  Also a big thank you goes out to Brian King for his advice to spray easy tack adhesive onto the back of the stencils to avoid bleeding while spritzing.

2.  Avery’s aunt selected the colors, Island Indigo, Garden Green and Strawberry Slush.  I used those same colors to make the word divider banners with Island indigo as the base,  Two strips of Strawberry Slush polka dots cut at 2″ by 10 1/4″ scored at every 1/4 inch made the big rosettes.  For the smaller ones I used a Tim Holtz rosette die and topped it off with a Frosted Finish embellishment.  The ribbon is from a big box store.

3.  One last thing regarding the banner.  When I received the banner kit, I opened it all up and began laying out the banners and letters, only to realize that I was missing the letter V.  A kind of important letter when you need to spell Avery.  I was able to improvise and use the top portion of the Y to make my banner but I called Stampin up to let them know I was short one letter.  They are sending me a whole new kit, because they can’t just send me one letter.  This is one of the things I love about Stampin Up.  They are very customer focused and will do what is right, to make it right.  Now with another kit coming I’ll have enough banners to make one for Avery’s little sister, Hadley.

Ok, now for the cake. The theme of Avery’s party is Wizard of Oz.  She has a dorothy costume to wear, lots of creative food, like Flying Monkey chicken wings and wafer cookies for a yellow brick road.  My daughter wanted an emerald city cake, so I volunteered to make it.  What was I thinking.  I ordered a WIlton Fairy Princess Castle cake kit which claimed to have everything you need. Oh Huh!! After reading through the directions and recovering from my panic attack, I called my other daughter, the chef, and asked her to help.  Then went to the store and purchased all the other things we would need……$140 worth.  Jeesh.  Anyway, here is the result of our labor of love.

It is definitely green!!  The most important thing is I know Avery will love it.  After all, she’s 4!.

Thanks for stopping by today.
Lynn

What I used
Ink: Strawberry Slush, Garden Green, Island Indigo, Paper: Island Indigo, Strawberry Slush DSP, Gingham Garden DSP, Color Collection DSP Stack Regals.  Accessories: Re-inkers, rubbing alcohol, Build a Banner kit, ribbon, glue gun, Easy Tack spray adhesive