Fall Door Decoration

With Halloween creeping up and Thanksgiving close behind, it's time for a door decoration update. I saw a pin on pinterest showing How to Print on Burlap using a printer. In the example, she made a cute little banner similar to the one in my picture above. I'm sorry to say that my printer kept eating my burlap, but I still wanted to make the banner for my door, so I did it the old fashioned way—

I painted it. 

It's hard to see this in the picture, but some of the leaves have words written on them. I asked the kids to write a word on as many leaves as they wanted describing something they are thankful for. We will do this for several Sundays to make sure everyone gets a chance to participate. I hope our door will be covered in leaves by the time Thanksgiving arrives.

Materials needed:

Burlap

Punch out letters (I used 4 inch and 2 inch)

Ruler

Pencil

Tracing paper

Twine

Scissors

Glue

Tape (not pictured)

Leaves
Paint (not pictured)
Paint brush (not pictured)
Printed letters for the banner
Straight pins (not pictured)

Instructions:

The actual door construction is fairly self-explanatory I think just by looking at the picture. However, there are only a couple of shopping tips that may be useful: 

1. Make life easy on yourself. Don't try to print and cutout the letters for the main words. And don't drive all over town going to Walmart, Target, and Dollar General trying to find punch out letters if you don't have to. Go straight to Knowledge Tree (or any other teacher supply store). Sometimes I'm afraid those types of stores are going to be pricey, but for punch out letters, they can't be beat. They have a great selection in sizes as well as colors and the prices are very reasonable.

2. The leaves, on the other hand, were a challenge. Surprised? I sure was. I figured I'd just run into Hobby Lobby, Michael's, or Dollar General, plop down less than $10 and off I'd go. Ha. Turns out, leaves are fairly spendy—well, halfway decent ones anyway. 

I first considered paper punch out leaves. They were ridiculously expensive, considering I needed a lot of them to make a pile of leaves. Then I looked at bags of leaves. Again, too far out of my budget. And then I saw the garland. I purchased four 6-foot lengths of garland for $3.49 each at Party City. The leaves were nicer, pulled right off, and provided me with an ample amount. 

Now, to make the banner:

1. Using any word document program, find a font that is thick and easy to read. I used Cooper Black in Word. Print the word "Fall" (or whatever word is desired) on regular printer paper.

2. Cut each letter out, leaving a small margin around.

3. Draw triangles large enough for each letter on the burlap with a ruler.

4. Cut out the triangles. Be sure to allow extra room for the top to be folded over (see #12 below).

5. Line up each letter on the triangle so they are even with each other.

6. Place a sheet of tracing paper between the burlap and each letter. 

7. Trace the outline of the letters with the pencil.

8. Paint the letters and let dry. I hung them up in my craft closet to keep them from sticking to the work surface.

9. Cut the twine to the desired length.

10. Fold twine in half to mark the center.

11. Align the triangles along the twine so the edges touch each other.

12. Fold over about 1/2" of the top edge of the triangle to the back, finger pressing to make a crease.

13. Place a bead of glue in the valley of the crease.

14. Put the twine in the glue filled crease and fold over.

15. Pin the fold down to hold it into place.

16. Hang to dry. This prevents the glue from seeping out and sticking to the work surface.  

17. Remove the pins when dry. 

NOTE:  All images, text and printables contained herein are copyright protected. This material is for your personal use only. I encourage you to print or pin from this site whenever you would like as long as it is credited and linked back to EasyBreezySundaySchool.blogspot.com. Failure to link back and credit my site constitutes a copyright violation.  Thanks so much!