paper pennants

My little daughter recently had a birthday party and I was in my typical manic fever, looking for an EASY, fast way to decorate, as I had mismanaged my time (huge surprise) and guests were arriving in an hour. Not to mention that I still had to shower. It's embarrassing to admit, but this is pretty much the normal sequence of things in my world.

So I cut out colored paper triangles and taped them with low tack tape to my mantel. I loved the look so much I did more in the kitchen. I thought well, THAT was easy. Isn't it cheerful looking? Actually, her birthday was two weeks ago, and the paper pennants are still up. I like 'em. (Don't leave even low tack tape on sheet rock overnight -- you don't want to mar the finish of your walls. But it will be safe on glossy trim and glass.)

If you had a wee bit more time than an hour, you could also cut out or stencil letters on them first, like this. You guys out there with those fancy die cutters for letters could whip this out in minutes:


So simple. And fast. Fast is good in my world. And because they are not on a string, you can put them as far apart or close together as the space calls for. Also, totally re-usable. I'm going to squirrel mine away in a drawer for the next party.

I did mine with whatever scrap paper or construction paper was on hand, but you don't have to. Your local craft store has a hugemongous assortment of cardstock scrapbooking papers, so go crazy. Do solids or patterns or mix them willy nilly. I sized mine so that I got two pennants out of every letter-sized piece of paper, with leftovers.

Postscript: after I wrote this post, I noticed another blogger had a very similar idea, only way greener, using newspaper. But hers is on a string. There must be some mystical crafting collective unconscious out there. Check it out here:
maya*made: newspaper bunting: a tutorial