Make the prettiest of pretty cards for a friend’s birthday with floral bunting.

I’m joining my blogging friend Anna from Tea and a Sewing Machine and her Year of Bunting challenges again today. For the month of May she set the theme of Bunting Featuring Flowers and at the beginning of May one of my dear friends celebrated their birthday. A good opportunity to combine the 2 things, I made my friend a flowery bunting card and thought you might like to see how, in case you want to make one for a special friend of yours. This is a great project to use up some tiny pretty paper scraps. Quite of a few of my pieces were from the decorative page edges of a Cath Kidston diary from a few years ago.

To make a Floral Bunting Birthday Card you will need:

• A 5”x7” card blank or patterned card cut to size

• Scraps of floral paper - if you don’t already have scraps a pack like this would work well.

• Scraps of lace, paper doilies, sequins, buttons etc

• Paper Glue (I used Pritt Stick) and PVA (I used Anita’s Tacky Glue)

• String or twine

Cut a 7” length of string and a selection of bunting flag sized scraps of floral patterned paper. I did a mix of widths and lengths. Where I had enough patterned paper I cut them twice the length I wanted the flags to be so I could fold them in half.

Using the paper glue stick the paper flags to the string. Overlap some, space others out. Just play around until you are happy with the arrangement.

If you use a length of pretty washi tape you can just fold it in half over the string then trim it to the length you want.

It’s nice to give the bottoms of the flag different finishes, some cut on the slant, some with a v shape, etc.

Use the pva glue to attach the string to the card, arrange it slightly diagonally across the top.

Leave the pva to dry.

When the glue is dry and the string is secure, trim off the ends. Make 2 small bows and glue one on each end. It is much easier to get nice looking bows this way, rather than trying to tie them on the ends with your original longer piece of string.

Glue any more embellishments you want to add to the bunting. Add buttons, sequins, ribbon roses, paper flowers, gems - whatever you have in your stash. You can go quite ‘over the top’ here, more is more I think; we are making a pretty card so let’s make it really pretty! Use the tacky pva glue for this.

Leave everything to dry.

If you’d like a greeting on the card you can use a stamp or print out something on your computer, cut it out and glue it on. Or you could do what I did and write a personalised message. I just wrote, in pencil first, in my best fancy writing and then inked it over with a Pigma Micron pen when I was happy. My most favourite eraser of all time is this Black Pearl one from Paper Mate, I’m not sure they even make them any more (they are not on their website) but if you ever see them in a shop grab them quick! They are such good, smudge free erasers.

If you use a double sided patterned card to make your card blank, as I did, you might want to add an insert. I show a quick step by step tutorial for that here if you don’t know where to put the glue.

That’s it, a pretty pretty floral birthday card with flower covered bunting.

Here’s a different version of the same idea, this time with a stamped greeting and the bunting sloping the other way. This one has some scraps of ribbon used as bunting flags too.

I’ll be sharing this project at some of these link ups.