We normally drive up to North Carolina for Thanksgiving dinner with some of Hunter’s family and I really have no reason to decorate our house for the holiday, but I was feeling extra festive this weekend, saw a cute banner and decided to make my own for our mantle!  I headed to Hobby Lobby to grab a few sheets of card stock and was ready to go.

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Fall ‘Thankful’ Banner

What you’ll need:

• 1 12″ x 12″ piece green card stock
• 4 12″ x 12″ cranberry card stock
• 4 12″ x 12″ tan card stock
• Cricut Maker
• Spatula tool
• Elmer’s glue
• Hole punch
• Twine
• Scissors

This week I saw a cute Cricut design for a fall banner and loved the leaf design so that was the basis for my whole banner – I loved the leaves.  I found the project in Design Space and chose to customize the project myself. The banner is free if you have a Cricut Access membership.  I decided to change the colors to a cranberry, tan and green scheme so grabbed a few pieces of each and got started customizing.

PS – You can get a Cricut Access membership here!

I decided I wanted to write ‘Thankful’ out and have the leaves on the outside, so the first thing I did was delete the excess leaf and ‘home sweet home’ design.
Next I changed the colors of the banner pieces I was keeping to be in line with what I was making.  You can do this by clicking the color circle next to the item in the menu on the right.  I also resized the pennants to be 6″ in height, so I would be able to get more on 1 sheet of card stock than the original size.

When I looked at the 2 pieces that made up the solid pennants, I realized one was basically just an outline.. so I deleted that, copied the cranberry piece (previously orange) and increased the size to make it bigger for the other piece to sit on top of.

I inserted a text field and added a T in Archer font.  Then I layered it on top of the cranberry piece, aligned the 2 pieces so they were centered horizontally and attached them so the T would be cut out of that piece.Select both the cranberry and tan pennant pieces you just made and duplicate them for the rest of the letters in thankful.  Change the T to be each of the letters you need (one letter per pennant).  Make sure to attach each letter back to the cranberry pennant piece so they’ll be cut correctly.  This is what all my banner pennant pieces looked like before I cut everything out.  Now you’re ready to cut!

Cricut will separate your pieces on mats by color and place items as efficiently as it can, but feel free to move anything around to use the least amount of space on your card stock.  Then you’ll cut the green, cranberry and tan pieces out on your Maker choosing the medium card stock material option.When everything is cut out, you’ll need to grab some glue.  Add glue to the back of the leaves and then put them on top of the tan pennants.  Also do the same for the letters.  The letter A will need the A’s inside triangle, so make sure to keep that and also glue it to your card stock.Because I wasn’t thinking ahead and let Cricut do this work for me… I had to use my hole punch to add 2 holes to the top corners of each pennant for string to go through.  Then string some twine through them, making sure as little of the twine shows as possible.Leave a little bit of twine on each end so it’s easy to hang it and you’re done!  I just hung it from our mantle for now and will have to take it down when we update the space (hopefully in November).  Also don’t judge the garland… I wanted to see if that length would work and got it that morning and decided to just leave it up for now!  Our living room has been kinda bare since we are expecting to renovate it soon, but I’ve decided to just decorate it anyways for now!

I made this the afternoon GT played Virginia and Clemson played NC State and we ended up having friends over to watch the game.  I had planned on making this banner regardless, so went upstairs to cut all my pieces and brought it all downstairs to finish in the living room with my friends. This is how easy it really is to put together – you can do it while watching football and chatting with friends.  After a few minutes I had my banner and Lauren helped me center it on the mantle!

As I’m slowly expanding my holiday decor, it’s nice to add some Thanksgiving goodness to the mix!  I’m loving the banner on our mantle right now and will pack it away and bring it out next year as well for a great reminder.