Guest Designer at You Had Me @ Craft : Baby Nursery Banners

I'm so excited to be the Guest Designer over at You Had Me @ Craft today! Thank you so much Alex for this opportunity!  I hope everyone visiting enjoys my blog and you are inspired!  I'd love to have you as a follower or subscriber....and I always love, love, love to read your comments as they also inspire me!  So onto my newest projects.....

I recently created two baby nursery banners for some friends of mine.....first was for baby girl Adalyn and the second one is for baby boy Isaiah!  Adalyn is already here and is healthy as can be, but we are anxiously awaiting on Isaiah....but it won't be long!  :) (I have another banner I'll soon be working on for a friend who is having twins!   So exciting!) :)

But for Adalyn, her mommy did her nursery in a Cherry Blossom theme with pinks and browns....so beautiful!  I could not wait to make this banner for her when I found this lovely paper from S.E.I. at Michael's.  I also found a coordinating 'shimmery' pink paper that I used for letters and flowers which you'll see below.

I cut these banner 'pennants' from the Frame1 image on pg 61 of the Songbird cartridge.  I LOVE this frame and use it a lot for my banners.  When cutting the chipboard for these, this is an easy shape to sand/distress the edges in order to ink them.  I inked the edges of the pennants in brown ink after distressing them.  On the backs of the pennants, I just used a plain brown paper.

So then I found some awesome cherry blossom stickers from Jolee to add to this banner as well.  I used the Flower6 image on pg 55 of the Pagoda cartridge to cut the cherry blossom shape to go underneath the letters and I inked these in pink to make them stand out. 

For the letters in A-d-a-l-y-n, I used the Cindy Loo cartridge, which I also LOVE to use this font. I cut several layers of these letters since this paper was so thin and just glued them together to get a thicker letter.

I adhered the letters and the flower blossoms with foam tape for dimension.  Below is the flowers cut from the 'shimmery' pink paper which I used on the first and the last pennants of the banner.

Then to put this all together, I simply tied them together with brown satin ribbon and beige tulle.

I think this was my most favorite banner so far! :) 

Nancy, Adalyn's mommy also loved it and has already hung it in Adalyn's room!  Yay! 

(Sorry the lighting is not the greatest in my pics!) :(

Next, I created this cute and fun banner for baby boy Isaiah which is due in a less than 2 weeks!  His nursery bedding is the Ahoy Mate set (found at Babies R Us).  Isn't it cute?  I love the banner curtain valance with this set, which of course I had to reference this 'banner' in my banner that I have made! :)

Courtesy of BabiesRUs.com

For Isaiah's banner, again I used the Songbird cartridge for the pennant shapes and the Cindy Loo cartridge for the letters, I-s-a-i-a-h.  I cut several layers of these like I did on Adalyn's banner but on this one, I layered a blue letter with the cut-outs over a solid brown layer of this font. I liked this look on the patterned paper I used.  Also, I inked the edges of the pennants in brown ink after distressing them.

I found this patterned paper at Michaels from Deja Views...it's called Skinny Stripes.  All I had was the picture above from the Babies R Us website, and I thought that the colors worked really well with the bedding from what I could tell.  (Fingers crossed!)  :)  On the backs of the pennants, I just used a plain brown paper.

I cut the "little" banner image from the Everyday Pop-Up Card cartridge and used it on the first and the last pennants of this banner.  (Told ya I loved that banner curtain valance in the picture above!)  :) 

I used the Create A Critter cartridge for the Monkey, Whale, and the Palm Tree images.  For the sailboat in the picture below, I used the Going Places cartridges and cut several images from different papers to create the mulit-colored sailboat and 'wave'.  All of the image edges except the whales are inked in brown and the whales are inked in blue.  Also, I adhered the letters and all the images with foam tape for dimension.

You can't really tell from my picture (sorry), but I added Glossy Accents to my little 'wave' under the sailboat which added a nice touch to this image.  I also added a little dot of Accents to the monkey's noses too. :)

You can kind of see the Glossy Accents in the picture above....can't ya?  :)  Then to finish off this banner, I tied them all together with a dark blue satin ribbon and some brown tulle.  The patterened paper didn't have quite enough of the dark blue I thought that was found in the bedding, so I'm hoping the dark blue ribbon will balance it all out. :)

I'll be giving Isaiah's banner to his mommy, Kali soon at her baby shower and I cannot wait to see her reaction when she opens it!!  Every banner I create, I fall in love with and it's so hard to give them away....even though I've made them for someone else to begin with!  Ha!

Stay tuned for more banners coming soon!  :) 

As I mentioned, I need to create the Twins' banner really soon as they will be arriving in a couple of weeks as well.....or at least that's the doctors thoughts anyway.....but we all know, they'll be here when they are good and ready!  :)  They do not know the genders of the twins so I know that will be an exciting surprise for them....but it has certainly been a challenge for me in planning out this banner! :)

Well I hope you enjoyed these banners I've made and come back to visit my blog often for more creations from time to time!  Hope you have a blessed day!

Shelley (Carley's mom)